Sweet Attack
by unkeptsecret
Summary: Chaos returns to Roanapur as the Triads and Hotel Moscow start their inevitable war. Old alliances clash with new ones, and the only person who can save them all is pressing out his collared shirt by the bed. Revy and Rock. Chang and Balalaika.
1. Beyond Trust and Profit

_A/N at unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com /5329. All my A/Ns go up on the blog to avoid clogging the margins of the story._

_Disclaimer: The major characters and city aren't mine. I'm just playing in Rei's sandbox._

* * *

Bai Ji-Shin Chang looked down at the mass of blonde hair ungraciously slung across his side of the double bed and sighed. This was a problem. He couldn't be expected to share a bed with Balalaika _and_ her ungodly amounts of hair.

Lucky for him, this was one problem had an easy solution. Chang would have one of his men suggest to Mrs. Sabai that she should purchase new mattresses for her home. She would take the hint well enough. After all, the aging widow stood to profit the most from the arrangement that made her immaculate Thai bungalow, which was ideally located on the edge of the gangster's paradise city of Roanapur and thus favored by Chang and Balalaika as a neutral meeting spot during the rainy season, available at moment's notice. Any one of Chang's Blue Lanterns could slip her an envelope with cash enough to cover a dozen king-sized, memory foam beds and the Egyptian cotton sheets to go on them. Chang himself would pull a few strings to expedite the shipping. The unspoken expiration date on a few minor favors was about to go, so the timing was ideal...

The woman beside him shifted in her sleep, and even that smallest of motions was enough to break apart his smoke ring of delusions. Chang closed his eyes, inhaled, and remembered the unforgiving truth. There was no need for new mattresses. This was the last (and first) time that he would have the chance to sleep next to the fearless and breath-taking Balalaika, beloved tsaritsa of the Hotel Moscow Russian crime syndicate and the only woman that Chang had desired in five long years.

She had never fallen asleep on him in the past, not that they had accumulated a long history of fucking (on beds or otherwise). Last night, they had met for the negotiations, as usual. When that fell apart, which was, sadly, as Chang had expected, he and Balalaika chit-chatted about the usual topics until one of them (usually her) grew impatient with flirtations. After they made love with the accustomed shameless abandon, she had unusually dropped off. One moment, she was mouthing off yet another insult about his gangster ways, the sting of which was lessened considerably by the languid stroke of her fingertips against his chest, and then she was lost to exhaustion.

Chang liked the usual. Even though watching her sleep was like looking down into a smoky volcano from the tip of its molten crater- absolutely spectacular, but it was a bad sign. An exhausted Balalaika was a Balalaika who was working too hard and too long on things that couldn't be good for the Triads.

Chang watched with detached interest as her restless hand troubled the sheets before settling up next to her face. The scars on her wrist blended into the scars on her cheek. Chang thought better of leaning down to kiss that minute patch of perfect skin over her eye that had somehow escaped the inferno's blast. He wondered if anyone else knew of its existence. Did any of those men who followed her like enchanted children after a pied piper ever watch her sleep? Or was this yet another secret that he shared with her alone?

She slept on her least scarred side. Chang guessed that she had acquired the habit during the long months it must have taken her body to recover from those mysterious, innumerable wounds. In his imagination, Balalaika had passed through the very maw of hell and that the jealous flames had consumed a full third of her perfect skin out of spite. The burns should have been the end of her beauty. The thickened, puckered scar tissue chewed up the right side of her face and the better part of her torso as well. Hell, it had even gnawed one nipple into a shapeless mound of angry, red flesh. What sort of pervert would find that attractive on a woman?

Oh, right. Him. Over and over again, _him_.

Chang reached for his cigarettes.

Balalaika stirred at the metallic whisper of his lighter strike. She blinked twice before pushing herself up on her hands.

"I shouldn't have fallen asleep," she chided herself with a raspy, morning voice.

Chang shrugged and lied. "I don't mind. Sleep all you want. I would have joined you, but your hair takes up half the damn bed."

Balalaika froze him with a nasty look from her icy blue eyes. "It's a wonder that you didn't try to strangle me with it. There's a poem to that effect, no? Or is there a sub clause in the gangster code that forbids life imitating art?"

"Hey, now!" Chang said, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. "Don't confuse me with Browning. What kind of guy would pass up the chance to spend a night next to a dangerously beautiful woman?"

Balalaika snorted. Flattery absolutely failed to charm her. Chang loved that.

"Only a fool would pass up an opportunity to eliminate an enemy," she pointed out.

"I'm not your enemy yet, Balalaika. You know that. Besides, we both know that I'd need a blade if I was going to take a stab at you," Chang said with a half-smile. They never took any weapons into their meetings. It was a given. They went through a damned metal detector. Their men did separate sweeps of their meeting locations, and her loyal dog, Boris, was probably closer than shouting distance. Chang couldn't hurt her even if he had the desire.

His bad pun almost worked. The anger evaporated from her expression, and she nearly smiled back but then elected to drop her gaze instead. Chang didn't savor how much he wanted to grab her by her pretty chin and make her look at him. He was getting soft in his old age. The end of something, anything really, had a cutting edge. He knew that. He shouldn't let fare-thee-wells darken his spirits.

Balalaika swung her impossibly long legs over the edge of the bed and bent down to collect her wrist watch from the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. She swore in Russian as she checked the time. Chang sympathized. It was far too close to morning. He would need to compensate his men waiting out back in a darkened Benz accordingly, but that could wait.

"How about breakfast?" he asked as he luxuriated across the newly vacated bed. It was no wonder that Balalaika had conked out. The damn thing felt like a dream. He was rethinking the memory foam idea.

"That's adorable. _Let's_," cooed Balalaika with obvious disdain.

"Suit yourself, but I'm in the mood for _Ba mii muu daeng_."

"You're in a good humor," Balalaika observed wryly. "Funny, I would have thought that news that the negotiations were dead in the water might have had some negative effect on your perpetually sunny disposition."

Chang stared up at the smoke from his cigarette as it scattered in the slow revolution of the ceiling fan. He let all teasing fall out of his voice when he answered. "I'm not pleased at all with the final word from Hong Kong, if that's what you want to hear. But I suppose it hardly matters when St. Petersburg has the same line. I wanted a lasting peace for this dirty city. Not all of us look forward to war. Some of us rather like the view of the bay without the soundtrack of gunfire."

"Well, you can blame those damn spics for ruining your tropical sunsets," Balalaika returned.

It was true, mostly. After that disaster with fox hunting, the Colombian Cartel had all but disappeared from Roanapur, which suited Hotel Moscow and Chang's 14K just fine. Those thoughtless guappos were far too much trouble. They had brought that drugged-up hell hound down on the damn city _twice_, for crying out loud. No one mourned their ignoble departure from the cityscape. Chang had hoped to work with Balalaika to fill the void, but then the Italians had to wedge their shiny, pointy-toed shoe into the mix. Those mafiso goons weren't much better than the Colombians. They had invited in those insane vampire brats to eat up the city, after all. Verrocchio sucked down a lead sandwich for that stunt, but his replacement had as much needless machismo and only a tad more common sense. At least the new Dago was sharp enough to see that the Russians and the Triads weren't keen on working with him. Combined, Balalaika and Chang wielded enough power to shove out the Black Hand out of Roanapur entirely, so new Dago wised up. According to good sources, he was cooperating with the Cartel to bring the Colombians back into Roanapur in exchange for a larger take of the cocaine trade and an ally in the coming mob war.

The balance of power was shifting. Hotel Moscow and the 14K agreed that the situation required action, but if they united to push out the troublesome factions, what then? Only two giants would remain standing in the city, and Roanapur was too precious of a jewel. She made men greedy. Would either side favor trust and truce when there was so much profit begging to be taken?

Yep, there was the rub. Too few people appreciated the beauty of the status quo like Chang did. They always wanted more, more, more. Sure, Balalaika had her faults, but at least greed wasn't one of them. Perhaps that was why they got along so well. Chang had his theories about why she had assumed the mantle of a crime baroness, and none of them involved cash.

Just thinking about Balalaika's warped sense of priorities made Chang's head hurt, so he stopped thinking and watched her make her way across the room, a terrifying goddess of destruction bereft of her customary business suit and stockings, and sighed.

The naked Balalaika cocked an eyebrow at the sound. "If you can't stomach it, don't look. Although I hardly see why you should get squeamish now, of all times."

Chang bolted upright. "Are you kidding? No. For fuck's sake, woman, _walk slower_. When do you think am I going to get to see this again?"

He did a piss-poor job of hiding the bitterness in his voice, and Balalaika was no fool. She halted on her way to the small washroom and turned to face him directly. She held his gaze as she stalked back to the bed. When she was within arm's reach, Chang abandoned the devil-may-care attitude. He hooked his thumbs around her tiny waist and dropped his forehead into the dip below her sternum.

"I wasn't kidding about breakfast," he confessed against her stomach.

"How sentimental. When did you turn into such a sap?" she said coolly, but her long fingers crept into his hair. Lacquered nails electrified his whole being as they spread along his scalp.

He leaned back to find her eyes again. "Don't get all self-conscious with me again. It's insulting. You always kill me in those slutty suits. I'm going to miss seeing you without them."

"Poor baby. I'm so sorry," she teased before leaning down to kiss him full on the mouth to silence the latest refrain in his "Don't Call Me Baby" campaign.

Chang savored the kiss. It tasted like the last sip of a Thai iced tea: tangy and sweet and warm.

While his mouth worked against hers, Chang's thumb swept downward and circled the pock marking of a bullet hole on her abdomen. He put it there, and his body sported four similar puncture scars thanks to her. When Hotel Moscow made its move into the city in 1993, the Triads responded with war, and the Ivans answered in kind. The first time he really saw Balalaika was when she was aiming for his head. Punching a few ragged holes in one another hardly engenders romance, but it did plant the seeds of respect. No common enemy could fight the Heavenly King to a standstill. After their legendary shoot-out, even Hong Kong agreed that it was more profitable to endure Hotel Moscow's presence in Roanapur than cope with the expense of eliminating Balalaika's Special Forces. The uneasy truce was born.

Their shared respect grew into friendship. Despite her blustering in those awful meetings of the heads, Balalaika was the first to call for private meetings with Chang. Later, she offered the Triads fair warning about Verrocchio's treachery. They understood each other, and their goals aligned more often than not. Together, they formed an unofficial alliance without the blessing of their superiors, but Chang hadn't realized just how much he needed Balalaika to hold his city together until Hotel Moscow all but vanished to Japan for damn near two months. The Triads did what they could to stem the free-for-all, but it wasn't until Balalaika set foot back on the docks in the harbor that Chang could sleep again at night.

Looking back, between the lines of business and the power plays, their mutual attraction had been there from the start. In the beginning, Chang couldn't figure out how any man could fail to be distracted by Balalaika in business suits that looked frightfully like the kind of thing Rowan would put on his girls for those infamous "CEO's and Office Ho's" theme nights. Low-cut, short, tight, and red. _God_. It took a half dozen encounters to figure out why she didn't drive other men out of their minds. No one else saw Balalaika as a woman. Even her comrades, who loved her more than a junkie loves his next fix, neglected to see the princess in the tower. To them, Balalaika _was_ the goddamn, unassailable tower.

To Chang, she was all wicked wit and fierce curves, a bossa nova when she moved and an empress when she spoke. He didn't always understand her point of view, but he always liked the view of her. And she flirted. That had almost been the death of him. Not even those cheeky 16-year-old whores, all strung out on yaba, had the gall to tease Chang, and he was fucking paying them.

Of course, no one suspected his attraction but her. Chang took care to cover his tracks. He called her Fry Face until the name stuck. He kept his sunglasses on and his hands in his overcoat pockets. He was worse than a schoolboy with a crush, and Balalaika knew. When everyone else sees you as a giant, it takes another giant to look you in the eye. She did, and she was amused. She took up summoning him to totally unnecessary meetings just to see if he would complain. She would stand too close and call him "Baby". She teased him about their "dates" during the negotiations. By the time the talks to solidify their position against the threat of the Cartel and the Italians were in full swing, Chang was just about out of ideas to keep his inflamed libido in check, and then she moved their rendezvous points indoors to dodge the rains of July. She introduced the concept of a closed room, complete with a table, chairs, and a whole _bed _at Mrs. Sabai's modest but well-appointed bungalow. And to top it off, Chang had to endure the agonizingly fantastic distraction of Balalaika re-crossing her legs.

She loved his discomfort, but in the end, she was the one who goaded him into action. She had leaned over the table to flick the spent ash of her cigar into the tray, spilling her cleavage all over the place like a common whore, and Chang just broke.

"Look, you can fuck me," he found himself saying. "I won't lie. I'd really like to see you without that cheap suit. But don't fuck _with_ me, Balalaika. That's just crude."

She smiled like a sphinx, snagged his tie, and dragged him halfway over the table to kiss him.

That was their first kiss, and Chang strongly suspected that he was tasting their last. It was only fitting that she, who started it all, should be the first one to pull back.

"Blinis," she said softly as she turned away.

"What?" Chang asked after her.

"Russian pancakes. They are very good with honey. For breakfast. Maybe someday..." she trailed off.

Chang stood and stretched. His sunglasses were waiting on the nightstand, and he shoved them on his face. Someday would never come. It was sweet of her to lie for him. Christ, if she kept this up this nice stuff, he would end up helplessly in love with her.

They dressed quickly and separately in the heavy silence that only comes when there is nothing left that can be said. Somewhere, a rooster proudly announced morning. Balalaika laughed to herself, no doubt amused by something so wantonly brash, and Chang couldn't bear it. He crossed the room in four steps with his hand stretched out to touch her marred cheek. She closed her eyes when his fingers sank back in the impossible tangle of her hair, and he pressed a final kiss on that perfect patch of unmarked skin over her eye.

"It's been fun, Fry Face," he said roughly.

Balalaika didn't grin. She reached back and removed his hand from her hair and brought it to her mouth. Her teeth closed around the first joint of his thumb and bit down hard before releasing him.

"See you, Baby," she said.

The swish of overcoats whispered their good-byes.

Chang paused on the porch to light another cigarette. To his left, a foreign car door slammed. The vehicle dropped into gear and rolled through the foliage towards the main road. To his right, another car crept forward and paused at the bottom of the stairs. The driver's side window rolled down.

"Any problems, Boss?" his driver asked. The poor guy looked a fright after a long night in a car. Chang made a note to feel bad about leaving his subordinate to fester in a parked car on a sweltering night so he could bang the woman who would orchestrate the death of them all.

"Yeah, we got problems. The talks are off," Chang said on a long exhale of smoke. "I need to phone in the news to Hong Kong on the way back to the house."

"You want me to swing by the docks and pick up Two Hands?" the driver asked.

Chang shoved his hands into his pockets and dropped down the steps to the waiting car. "That won't be necessary just yet. But could you send Mrs. Sabai something nice? I don't imagine that we'll need to use her place again for some time."

The door closed behind him.

From between the trees, the light from the newly risen sun broke through.


	2. The Badness

The wind tore at his collared shirt and simply-knotted tie. To his left, a woman wearing indecent denim shorts and enough heavy artillery to blow through a bank vault held the least of her weaponry, a pair of Beretta 92FS's, aloft and squeezed off two shots.

"Slow the fuck down!" she spat at the blindingly white ship currently veering away from the _Black Lagoon_, where Rock and Revy were trying to keep their balance on the newly painted deck.

"Please believe that your surrender is in the best interest of all of us, including your 128 very wealthy and likely very terrified passengers. Continuing to flee will only result in an escalation of violence," Rock pleaded into the mouthpiece of the jury-rigged com-system that he held tucked under one arm.

Rock was certain that the wind stole away his every other word, but he couldn't go back down under the deck. Some past-its-prime wiring had taken out the main radio early in the Lagoon's mad-dog chase-down of the _Dalagang Delikado_, a mid-sized luxury cruising vessel based out of Manila. Benny had slapped together a short range, back-up system for Rock to use to establish contact the targeted ship's captain, but its signal wasn't strong enough to penetrate the interference caused by Benny's elaborate electrical array tucked under the PT boat's deck. For the meantime, Rock was stuck between sea and sky with one increasingly pissed-off wildcat of a gunfighter for company.

Revy cocked her head to the side and dinged the fleeing vessel with another bullet. "Whatcha gonna do, wise ass? Run forever?"

Rock heaved a long-suffering sigh and waited for the captain's reply.

"_L-lumayas ka_!" came the answer after a tense minute.

Rock pulled a frown. The terrified captain on the other end of the line kept dropping back into his native tongue whenever one of Revy's shots collided with his boat's hull, and Rock's Tagalong was sub-par at best.

"Rock, how are negotiations?" Dutch's ever-cool voice crackled over the head piece.

"Quit trying to get away, you fuckers!" Revy growled to no one in particular.

The floor tilted underneath Rock's feet as the _Lagoon_ swerved to avoid colliding with the cruise ship. While Dutch's lovingly restored PT boat had no trouble out-running its quarry, the _Lagoon_ would lose in a big way if things came down to a show of brute force against the _Dalagang Delikado_. Rock had to find a way to convince the captain of the other vessel to slow down or Revy would get to go postal on a shipful of relative innocents. Judging from the twitch of pent-up rage he saw in Revy's exposed shoulders, Rock was running out of time.

Rock covered the mouthpiece so the captain couldn't hear him and turned his head away for good measure. "Dutch, this man is panicking," he said into his headpiece. "He's not going to slow unless I can find a way to calm him down."

"Whelp. Guess it's time for me to earn my keep," Benny joined in cheerfully. "Let's see. _Dalagang Delikado__. _Captain's name is blah blah blah. Nicknamed Rex. Cute. Lives in Bataganas. Blah blah blah. Oh, he's got a wife named Betty. Man, she's a looker. Two kids. Boy and girl. He's a total family guy. No record of arrests, nothing. Blackmail is probably out."

"I can work with that. Thanks." Rock went back to the external com line. "Listen, I know what it's like to have a job," he told the captain in his most patient English. "I understand pride, Rex. You want to defend your ship and I get that, but if you don't work with me, my associates will be forced to take dangerous actions. Rex, listen to me. _Aanhin pa ang damo, kung patay na ang kabayo. _Think of your family and do the right thing."

For a long moment, Rock listened to the steady whine of the _Lagoon_'s engine.

"I'm pretty much done with this freeze-tag bullshit!" Revy menaced. Her hands tightened around her weapons of choice. Rock could her the squeak of her leather gloves on the gun hilts over the roar of the wind.

"Be chill, Two Hands," Dutch returned. "Let Rock work his magic."

Through his other ear, Rock heard a different voice, this one laced with bowel-seizing fear.

"And you will not touch any person on this ship?" cruise captain Rex asked.

"We're just here to take something that one of your passengers had no right to steal," Rock said soothingly. "Think of us as a collection agency. We don't want anyone to get hurt either. We just want to get back our customer's items."

The roiling wake behind the _Dalagang Delikado _turned into a gentle simmer and then died off, and Rock felt the _Lagoon'_s speed drop in pace with the larger vessel's deceleration.

"Nice work, Rock. This is your cue, Revy. Go get it," Dutch ordered, not unkindly.

"On my way, boss-man," Revy replied.

His job done for the moment, Rock turned to watch his volatile partner do what she did best.

She stepped out from the cover of the super structure and holstered her guns. One foot followed the other, and then she was running, her boots thwacking an inhuman beat against the deck. One gliding leap put her on the tip of the railing before gravity stopped working. She launched herself into the great blue. For one heart-stopping moment, she was nothing but a taunt silhouette against a unforgiving sky.

Rock couldn't breathe.

Lithe lines and visceral grace. Bloodied beauty and a feral grin. Even after all this time, all he can do is stare. He's always been this way with her.

As the arch of her flight curved downward, Revy snagged a tow cable and scampered up the hull of the cruising yacht like a spider monkey. Before she disappeared over the edge of their target ship, she looked back at the _Lagoon _and gave Rock a quick nod, just a miniscule jerk of the head to reassure him that she was fine and that all is well in the pirating world. Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.

Rock kicked at a pivot on the deck as the sounds of Revy's reign on terror over the passengers of the cruise ship drifted down to him. Screams. A few yelps. The retort of a warning shot. Whimpering. Silence.

After a few awkward minutes, her voice came across the line. "Items secure. You wouldn't believe this shit. Guido tried to hide 'em in the crapper. What a fucking idiot."

More gasps. The hurried shuffle of a crowd seized by pure horror.

A duffel bag sailed out from the edge of the larger ship and skidded to a stop on the deck of the Lagoon, followed soon by the goddess of disaster herself. She landed in a crouch. Her hand steadied her earpiece.

"I'm back, boys. You miss me?" she growled with a sick smile.

"He got the message?" Dutch asked.

"I laid him out and dropped the Black Mark on his face. He got it good," Revy confirmed.

"Nice work. Let's get home in time for supper," Dutch finished.

The _Lagoon_'s engines rumbled as they turned back to Roanapur.

Rock held his hand up to his eyes to get one last look at the cruise ship.

"Happy sailing, Rex," he muttered to the sky.

Revy dug into the duffel bag, pulled out a brick of cocaine imprinted with a black scorpion on the top, and waved it at Rock from across the deck. "Will you get a load of this? I can't believe this gutless loser thought he could ditch the Italians, take six bricks just for kicks, and walk free. One, you don't leave the family; they leave you. Two, six bricks? C'mon! This guy had shit for brains. Now, he'll be running scared and broke. Black Mark on you, buddy. Good luck washing that stink off."

She pushed the bag over to Rock with a disbelieving shake of her head, and he dropped it down the hatch. When he turned back toward her, Rock thought he saw something invisible streaking out from the flagging cruise ship, leaving only a trail of troubled water in its path.

And then it hit.

Rock felt and heard the impact- a solid punch to that gut that made him feel like vomiting- but he saw nothing more than ripples on the sea. Revy, who had situated herself at the stern to menace their latest victims with a M79 in case they got any cute ideas, took the full force of whatever it was. It knocked her to her knees, and she heaved out the contents of her stomach down the side of the ship and into the turbine's frothy wake. Rock heard her moan over the whine of the engine, and he pushed down his own sickness and sprinted to collect her before she tipped into the ocean where the propellors would make fast work of her.

"Revy! You okay?" he asked automatically as he skidded to a stop on his knees beside the fallen gunslinger.

"Fuck me," she slurred. "What was that?"

Revy's legs were splayed out on either side of her as she sagged into the deck, and her hands looked dangerously close to losing their grip on the railing. Rock grabbed her shoulders just in time. Another bout of nausea seized her, and her hands lost their strength. Tugging her back from the water and into his chest, Rock reached around her to lay a hand on the M79's strap. It was just like Revy to hang onto her gun and fall into the sea rather than get caught unarmed above water.

"I got it," he whispered to her.

She looked up at him with glassy eyes. "What?"

"The gun. I have it," Rock said again, louder, and she winced at the noise. Whatever had hit them had sounded louder than a jet topping mach one, and Rock's ears were still ringing. He could only speculate how Revy must feel.

Reluctantly, she released the gun, so he was able to sling it around his shoulder.

"Let's get you inside," Rock told her gently.

"Nuh-uh," Revy gasped as she dry-heaved, sucked in a breath, and then spat downwind. "Need air."

Rock opted not to argue with her, and she was too dizzy to fight him when he dragged her to her feet and caught her body against him. The M79 banged painfully into this leg, but Rock concentrated on maneuvering Revy down into the cabin before they were hit with that mysterious something again.

"Benny!" he called into his head piece. "Something got Revy. I need to get her inside."

Static crackled on the line, and Rock panicked for a moment. What if it got Benny and Dutch, too?

"I heard it down here," Benny's voice returned at last. "Sounded like trouble. You okay?"

"Yeah," Rock comfirmed as he half-dragged, half-carried his woozy teammate the last few paces to the hatch, balanced her against one shoulder, and used his free hand to yank open the hole cover.

"How do you feel, girl?" he heard Benny's voice in stereo through both the headpiece and the newly opened hatch hole.

"Like shit," Revy mumbled. "What the fuck was that?"

"Sonic cannon," Benny answered. "Although why they waited to use it until we were on our merry way is beyond me."

Rock maneuvered a limp Revy over the opening and let go when he felt Benny accept her weight from below. Then Rock scrambled down the ladder and turned around at the bottom to find Revy resting comfortably in Benny's arms. Even though the Lagoon Company's resident hacker was a committed gear head, Benny had a good five inches on Rock and a solid build that let him cradle the whimpering Revy against his shoulder like she was a tiny girl instead of a bloodied Berserker.

"I don't feel so good," she muttered against Benny's aloha shirt.

"No kidding," Benny chuckled. "That cannon will fuck with your insides something fierce. I'll put you in my room by the vent where it's cool, but you gotta promise not to puke on the equipment, okay?"

"Nothing left to puke," Revy nodded solemnly.

Rock held the door, so Benny could carry Revy into his comfortably chilled quarters. Not long after he joined up with the team, Benny had convinced Dutch to let him route the A/C through his computer room first, in order to keep the expensive equipment chilled to non-frying levels despite the tropical heat. The arrangement left the rest of the boat a little too warm and stuffy, neither of which is helpful when one feels as sick as a poisoned dog. Benny's willingness to let a puking Revy hunker down anywhere near his beloved computers was a kindness that surprised Rock.

"Everybody okay?" called Dutch from down the hall.

"Why is everybody yelling?" whined Revy, who had turned herself into a pathetic little ball of limbs on the floor.

Rock looked to Benny, who was chuckling at Revy's child-like pouting.

"Can you...?" Rock asked.

"No worries. I'll keep an eye on Little Miss Sadness," Benny assured him.

"Hhhhate you," Revy moaned.

"Don't be that way, Rev. Do you want a Coke? I'll get you a Coke," coaxed Benny.

"Thanks," Rock returned, a little absently. With Revy safe, his mind had other matters to consider. He grabbed the duffel bag on his way to the helm. He pulled one of the tightly packed, white bricks from the bag and held it out to Dutch as he entered the control room. "Dutch, I think we have problems."

"So what else is new," Dutch sighed. After scanning the horizon for shipping traffic, Dutch locked in the controls and turned to face his employee. As soon as he saw the scorpion logo on the brick, Dutch leaned back in his captain's chair and dug a knuckle into his left temple. "Rock, tell me that's not the Cartel's logo on those drugs. Shit. If I had known this was going to turn into a gang-bang, I would have stayed home."

"I feel the same way. If our target had access to the Cartel's good, we can be certain that the Colombians are back in Roanapur," Rock affirmed.

"And since it was the Italians that hired us to track it down, we can assume that the Mafia is all cozy with the Cartel now, too," Dutch went on. "This is a fine mess. I was just getting used to the city being all quiet and stuff. I have half a mind to give Balalaika a heads up to nip this in the bud before we go back to crazy maids and all-night shoot outs."

"You're not serious," Rock said.

The corner of Dutch's mouth twitched upwards. "No, I'm not. A client is a client, and I'm not about to slander the good name of the Lagoon Company. Besides, there's a good chance that the Triads and Hotel Moscow are already on it. If I know anything about Miss Balalaika and Boss Chang, we won't have to do anything but lie low for a few days until this all blows over."

"Any chance you got our payment in advance?" Rock asked.

"Good point," agreed Dutch. "Hey, Benny-boy! Get in touch with Ronny and-"

"STOP YELLING!" screeched Revy.

"Damn, that girl's got lungs," Dutch complained. He ran a hand over his bald head and swung back around to the controls.

Benny came trotting into the bridge a half-second later. "I'm done zoo-keeping. Rock, see if you can soothe the savage beast. She's liable to take off a limb of me."

Rock took his time leaving, so he could listen to the rest of Dutch's orders.

"See if you can get the Italians to set up an automatic transfer for midnight," Dutch told Benny. "If we don't get Ronny the goods by then, he can skip the second half of the payment, but I don't intend to let that happen and I want our compensation locked in, just in case our boy gets wiped by the big guns before..."

Back in Benny's liar, Rock found Revy sucking on a Thai Coca-Cola and pulling a sad face.

"I feel like ass," she said in a little voice, all of her venom gone. She looked small and sick, and Rock wanted to drop down on the floor by the A/C vent next to her and gather her up in his arms. But Benny was right. She would take off his hand before she let him hold her. Instead, he would have to comfort him in a way that she would accept.

"We're out of range of that cannon by now," he smiled down on her. "Wanna go topside for a smoke?"

* * *

Coming into the harbor, the Buddha smiled beatifically down on them. If he had eyes, would he bless this city still? Rock thought so. Despite the raw sewage stink of the streets and the unending click of triggers, Rocks loved Roanapur in all her gritty splendor. His love made the Buddha carved into the island at the mouth of the harbor into a welcome friend. The view of the statue meant that Rocks was almost home.

Revy shifted next to him and pushed back the goggles that she had badgered Dutch into letting her borrow. _"The sun fucking burns, Dutch. Like I can feel the fusion in my skull. Don't a prick. I'll bring them right back. I just need them long enough to smoke, okay?"_

Rock smiled at the memory.

"What are you grinning for?" Revy's voice was an ominous rumble in his ear over the scream of the gulls. "Can't you feel it?"

The sun dipped behind the high rises that lined the ridge on the far edge of the city. Rock squinted into the glare to pinpoint the source of Revy's unease. He could feel her bristling beside him, all charged up and battle-keen.

"I don't see anything," Rock began.

"No shit. But I can smell it. Somebody unloaded an awful lot of gunpowder, and this place is about to be blown sky-high."

"Rock. Revy. Get down here," Dutch's voice crackled over the intercom in Rock's ear.

"That Dutch?" Revy asked.

"Yeah, he wants us to go back in." Rock pushed himself to his feet and offered her a hand up, which she ignored.

Revy took a last drag from her cigarette and flickered the still burning remains into the sea. "Figures. Bet he can smell it from down there, too."

Nothing exploded on the relatively short ride through the harbor, but for the rest of the trip, Revy was as silent as the police scanner that Benny had flipped on to monitor the city's unease. The unusual quiet made Rock nervous. He wished that he hadn't given his last smoke to Revy.

Back at the dock, a leggy blonde waved at the Lagoon crew from the top step of their recently rebuilt seaside office as they disembarked.

"Hey Revy! I brought you a present, but I drank it!" Eda called out. She waved a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam at them.

Revy rolled her eyes.

Very little had changed about the rip-off nun since they had all figured out that she was an American government sleeper agent. She still wore her habit on duty, a trashy halter top when off, and those lurid pink sunglasses always. She tipped them down to leer at the male members of the crew while Dutch and Benny tied up the boat. "Hello boys. Wanna party?"

"Like a bitch in heat," grumbled Revy. She cupped her hands over her mouth. "Go home, Eda! I can smell you from here! You reek of slag!"

"Suck a dick, Revy! There's no way I'm going back tonight with all those..." Eda trailed off as if she thought better of finishing that thought.

"Eda, is there something we should know about?" Dutch asked in his smooth baritone. He finished securing the _Lagoon_ to its moorings, and Rock could see the urgency in Dutch's seemingly careless saunter to the stairs.

"I know you can smell it, Eda. Wanna tell us what's really going on?" added Revy.

Eda plugged her mouth with the lip of the bottle in response and kept it attached to her face until they were all safely inside and the office door closed behind them.

"Ivans. All over the fucking place," she gasped out when she finally came up for air. "Balalaika is cleaning out the Church's stock tonight. She and Yolanda have been at it since lunch, haggling over prices. It's creeping me out. I couldn't take it anymore."

"Uh-oh," Benny said. "Skilled enough to win World War Three and arming for it, too? This can't be good."

"How do you all feel about taking a little vacation to Malaysia?" Dutch asked.

"Who are they targeting?" Rock asked Eda. "The Colombians?"

"Looks like it, but it gets worse," Eda went on. "There's talk that the honeymoon is over with Balalaika and Chang. From what I hear, they are looking to finish what they started in '93."

The only sound in the room was the thump of Revy's head banging against the wall as she slumped to the floor and fumbled for her extra clips to reload.

Rock felt a little sick.

At last, someone spoke.

"So, I vote that we get the fuck out," Benny said with false cheerfulness. "I rather like my body sans bullet holes, so let's ride before we get caught up in this badness."

And then several things happened at once.

The office telephone rang, and Dutch eyed it warily before stalking over to answer it.

Eda's cell phone went off, which made her nearly drop her bottle of booze in surprise. She had to rest it on the arm of the couch to fish the vibrating, singing thing from her hip pocket.

Someone knocked at the door, and Benny went for it, leaving Revy sitting there on the floor with her head dropped to her chest, and Rock gaping like an idiot in the middle of the cacophony.

"I should have expected this call, Miss Balalaika," he heard Dutch say.

"You want me to what? Oh, _hell_ no. Yolanda, what do I look like?" Eda griped into her cell.

Benny said nothing. He stepped back as Chang, clad in his customary black trench coat and white scarf, swept into the room flanked by two of his men, also in black suits.

"Pardon my hearing, but can you repeat that?" Dutch asked of the phone.

"WHAT?" Eda screeched.

"Two Hands. I'm sorry. It's time," Chang said.

There was noise, so much noise, but everything seemed far away, like the distant babble of rain, as Rock watched Revy stand and follow Chang out of the office and into the newly darkened night.

She didn't look back.

* * *

_Self indulgent notes about this chapter at_ _unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash)5608_


	3. Heavy Dose

Dutch was only half-listening to Balalaika's description of their next job because, without warning, there was an open door in the Lagoon's office, and it gave him an unexpected view of a rapidly darkening night. Dutch had known that this day would come, eventually, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier to accept the brutal reality that Revy had just showed them all her back.

Dutch looked around the room at the tableau of shock. Eda's mouth hung open, showing off the pink wad of bubble gum tucked behind her teeth. Her hand dropped the cell phone to her side, and distantly, Yolanda's voice called out again and again. Benny stared at the door with frown tugging down the corners of his mouth. The reflection of the street lamps on his glasses made his eyes impossible to read, but the defeated slump in the his shoulders clearly outlined his misery. And then there was Rock with his hands hardened into little balls of directionless rage and his face as pallid as a corpse.

Dutch reached under his sun goggles to pinch the nerve cluster on the bridge of his nose. He could feel the dull roar of a headache as it rushed to fill his skull.

"I'm going to need to call you back," he interjected over Balalaika's opening posturing for price negotiation.

"I'm sorry. Is this a bad time?" Balalaika asked. Dutch heard the edge of warning in her voice and opted to ignore it.

"Yeah, you could say that. I'll be in touch soon," he replied, careful to keep his voice even.

"Hmph. Well, don't keep me waiting long. I -"

Dutch returned the phone to the wall just in time to see Rock's frustration ignite into action. He made a break for the open door. Benny stepped in to block Rock's path with his body. Rock snarled. His fist drew back, and Dutch made it across the room to catch Rock's arm before the former salaryman could follow through on the punch.

"What the hell," Benny breathed, his eyes wide. "Were you seriously going to take a swing at me?"

"Chill out, Rock," Dutch ordered.

Rock twisted in his grip and stared up at Dutch with dark eyes that blazed with blind fury. His voice came out low and dangerous. "I'm getting her back. Get out of my way."

Dutch clamped down on Rock's wrists. "I said, chill out."

"Let me go," Rock menaced.

"You can't get her back, Rock," Dutch explained as gently as he could with his unhinged employee writhing like an electric eel in his grip. "You don't want to hear it, but Revy wanted to go. She's been waiting for this day since long before you ever showed up."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Rock exploded. "How can you say that? She's one of us!"

"Dutch is right," Benny said soothingly. "I mean, she must have told you about-"

"I said LET ME GO!" Rock yelled.

Dutch sighed. The poor guy always was a little crazy when it came to Revy.

Rock's guts collapsed around Dutch's fist like the warm give of bread dough as the blow connected. He dropped to the floor, sputtering and gasping while propped up on his hands and knees.

Dutch knelt down besides his employee. "When you're done being suicidal, I'm happy to talk."

"Yolanda?" Eda said from the background. "Things just got weird. I'm going to have to call you back."

Her cell phone clattered against the coffee table, and the rusty springs of the couch complained as Eda fell back into the battered cushions.

In that quiet moment, Benny reached over and closed the door. It shut with a click, and Rock made a small noise like a kicked dog.

Dutch took a deep breath and took control of the situation. "Benny?"

"Yeah, Dutch?"

"Balalaika has a job for us. We need to square up with the Italians right away." Dutch rocked back on his heels and pushed himself up. Rock's senseless rage seemed to have abated for the moment; he stayed on the floor. Dutch rubbed at his tired eyes again.

"You want me to make the drop alone?" Benny asked, clearly unsettled by the idea. He wasn't a fighter, and Dutch couldn't blame the guy for getting a little uneasy about doing a drop to a highly armed gang with the heat of impending war cooking the nerves of the city.

"Yeah," Dutch said. "I'm sorry to do this to you, but I can't trust this idiot not to go screaming into the night after our girl and I sure as shit can't take him along with us when everyone is wound up like little bunches of dynamite. I don't want any more trouble tonight."

"I'll go," Eda volunteered from the couch. "I need to swing by the Church and pick up some gear if I'm riding out with you boys anyways."

Dutch cocked an eyebrow at the nun. "And what makes you think you're coming with us?"

Eda narrowed her eyes. "Believe me, I'm not happy about it either. But Yolanda wants me out with you all on this job. You're gun-running for Hotel Moscow, right? That's really the Church's gig. I guess those old broads worked out some sort of deal, but that doesn't mean they trust each other. Besides, you need another shooter. With Revy gone and..."

Eda trailed off as everyone's eyes drifted over to Rock, anticipating another violent over-reaction. Rock merely tucked his legs under his body and sat back. His hands went to his head, but his ass stayed on the ground. Dutch hoped that it meant that the worst of Rock's fit was good and over. He turned his attention back to Eda.

"Balalaika didn't mention anything about extra company," Dutch said.

Eda shrugged as she escaped from the pliant softness of the couch. "Call her back. She's still at the Church. You can get her to confirm, but think about it, Dutch. It's not like Yolanda would just up and volunteer me for some stupid shit. She likes to stay clear and save bullets."

"So you'll cover my ass in exchange for a ride back to the Church?" Benny asked, a little too hopefully.

Dutch closed his eyes in mild irritation. Benny always played things too openly.

"If that's okay with you, Dutch," Eda agreed.

"Yeah. Get a move on, you two. I'll have the boat ready when you get back," Dutch decided.

Eda took a final gulp from her bottle of Jim Beam while Benny snagged the car keys from the hiding place under the third drawer from the left in the miniature kitchen. He touched Dutch's shoulder as they left.

"Good luck," Benny said. His eyes flicked down to Rock.

"Thanks," Dutch said.

"Want me to bring back Rico with me?" Eda offered.

"That won't be necessary. Oh, and Eda?"

"Yeah?"

Dutch waited until the nun looked back at him before continuing. "I would appreciate it if you didn't mention this business to Balalaika just yet."

Eda snapped her gum and grinned. "Who, me? I didn't see shit." She lifted her hand as she turned back to the door. "See ya."

Dutch felt a smile creep up as he watched Eda stomp down the stairs to Benny's car. Sure, she was an American spy and a lousy drunk, but Eda had her honor. That's what Dutch loved so much about Roanapur. The place had gotten downright respectable over the years. Once you figured out who were the decent villains and how their network of their alliances fit together, Roanapur made total sense. Well, it _had_ made perfect sense. With Hotel Moscow arming to go up against the Triads, everything would change, and when the dust settled, there might not be a place left in Roanapur for Lagoon's services anymore.

Dutch turned away from pointless self-pity and focused on Rock, who was still crouching on the floor.

"You back to yourself?" he asked.

Rock looked up, eyes clear at last. "Yeah. That wasn't like me."

"No shit, but I'd be lying if I hadn't seen this coming," Dutch returned. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and made a line for the liquor cabinet. Rock would need something to chase down the heavy dose of medicine that he had coming to him.

Rock picked himself up from the floor and trailed after him. "What do you mean?" he asked of Dutch's back.

"Here." Dutch thrust a highball of good bourbon into Rock's hand. "Take two sips, sit, and we'll talk."

Dutch helped himself to a glass. He dragged over a chair and spun it around to sit backwards, so he could prop his glass on the back rest and talk to Rock face-to-face. Dutch swirled the liquor and inhaled. That was as much procrastination as he would allow himself.

"Rock," he began. "I'm going to overlook that little outburst, but it can't happen again. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes," Rock said miserably. "I'm sorry, Dutch."

Dutch shook his head. "Don't apologize to me. I hit you, remember? Benny was the one that you tried to take down."

Rock sank lower into the couch. "I know."

"No, you don't," Dutch returned savagely.

Rock squirmed.

Dutch closed his eyes and put a leash on his temper, but one terrible thought wiggled free. After all his hard work, after four years of riding the waves with her, this was how it was going to end.

"Dutch?" Rock's voice broke in. "What don't I know?"

"You don't know about Revy." Dutch opened his eyes, took a long pull form his glass, cleared his throat, and started the story.

* * *

The first time Dutch saw Revy was in the winter of 1992. She showed up on the docks one orange afternoon while the fishermen rolled in. The _Lagoon_ was still dry-docked while Dutch pulled together the funds to fix up her hull.

She was just standing there on the furthest edge of the maze of piers, staring out at the miles of blue water. When he noticed her and the water beyond her, Dutch had to agree that the ocean did look particularly breath-taking that day. He saw the rips in her clothes and the gaunt lines of her face and felt a tinge of pity. Street kids never lasted long in Roanapur.

He climbed the stairs. Good luck, little girl. He pulled the office door closed behind him.

The second time he saw her was the very next morning. Dutch recognized those scrawny arms paddling in the water while a knot of fishermen stood around to watch the crazy girl in the harbor. Dutch stopped to watch, too.

"Hey! Watch this!" she yelled in English.

The Thai fishermen _tsk_ed their disapproval, which she mistook for encouragement. She grinned. With a flash of ankle, she dove down deep. The bubbles stilled, and the crowd waited. A minute or so later, she appeared with a sea cucumber in hand and a maniacal grin lighting up her face. She held it aloft and cried out, "See? I can dive. See?"

Dutch turned back to his repairs while the crowd dispersed. So what if she could swim? The fishermen were too poor to do any hiring, though none of them had the English to tell her so, and Dutch had no use for a crazy mermaid.

In the next few weeks, Dutch saw her around the city. Hustling with the small-timers. Asleep in an alley with the mangy cats. Each time, she was skinnier and wilder. Dutch figured that it was just a matter of time. There were dozens of girls like her in the city, and when they died off, there would be dozens more to replace them. But out of all of that faceless hoard, Dutch remembered her because she spoke American English, and he wondered why any child born into the advantages of the States would end up on the outer rim of civilization. Of course, he was Kentucky born and still here, but he had a war to sling-shot him to the other side of the globe. He couldn't imagine what had made her think that coming to Roanapur was a good idea.

Dutch saw her yet again a few weeks later. He was on his way back from meeting a potential client. Business was slow as fuck-all even though the boat was finally in the water, and Dutch had to admit that street kids weren't the only ones getting skinny in those lean days. Even so, the twist of hunger couldn't make Dutch bring himself to transport girls far younger than her for the sex slave trade. When he noticed her storming out of Rowan's shop, a look of pure disgust twisting up her wild yet beautiful face, he felt a touch of kinship. It was that irrepressible lick of pride that separated them from the rest of the bottom-feeders writhing in the filth of the humid city. Fuck the job when it cost you that pride.

There was a tussle on the street corner that Dutch only noticed out the corner of his eye, but the slightest flash of gun metal was enough to send him diving behind the nearest trash heap.

The shot went off, and when he looked up, there was a man, just some unlucky street vendor in a thread-bare shirt, bleeding on the pavement and another guy dressed in the tell-tale black suit of the 14K running like hell. The crowd stampeded to get away as the police sirens started up. The last thing Dutch saw over his shoulder as he got clear of the crime scene was the girl slumped on someone's stoop. She had nothing left in her to run. She tipped sideways as exhaustion claimed her, and Dutch spotted that unmistakable glint of a piece under her shirt. He couldn't remember if she had always had it on her, and if so, who had taught her to hide a gun so well?

Dutch didn't see her for months after that, but the rumors whispered her odd story. The cops picked her up for the murder. Apparently, the victim was the great-uncle of someone who mattered, so Watsup had taken an interest in justice over his golf game for once. Everyone knew that she hadn't pulled the trigger even though the cops found her at the crime scene with a gun. Some loose-cannon Triad had gotten his hands on a little bad yaba and tweaked hard enough to shoot up the street. Chang had the guy removed, but that wasn't the weird part. The rumors told that the girl wouldn't talk to the cops. She just refused to speak to them. Not a word. Nothing. And Chang wasn't about to volunteer the information to free some street rat. Normally, the situation would have cleared up on its own, but the victim's so-and-so grand nephew, who screamed for justice after the death yet didn't bother to replace that thread-bare shirt in life, wanted a trial. Watsup caved. It was all over within a day. They packed the girl away to prison. In a few weeks, the rumor hounds found a new bone to gnaw. The girl fell out of Dutch's mind.

A year and a half later, business was better. The mess of '93 had ended, and the city prospered. Dutch's beloved boat benefitted from the pay out of each successive job, and even though good help was impossible to find, Dutch's spotless reputation was enough to keep the Lagoon company growing.

He got a minor thing from the Triads. Lots of ways to screw it up but nothing really on the line. A test. A potential big break. Lagoon delivered perfectly, and Dutch celebrated the good times to come so enthusiastically that sunlight hurt his head for the next two days.

Only the Triads never called back. Dutch could not figure out what he had done wrong.

One day, a black car pulled up to the Lagoon's office, and Mr. Chang himself emerged with a sullen woman in tow. She had a gun tucked under each arm, brand new and so shiny that they glowed in the radiant afternoon light.

Dutch had to look twice to place her. It was the girl. Her face had harder lines now that made her look older, but prison will do that to a person. She was no longer skinny, but lean and sharp in the Triads' black and white instead of her ragged old clothes. Dutch didn't need to know the details to understand the story line. Mr. Chang had a reputation for pride, too. Letting an innocent languish in a Thai prison for a crime committed by one of his men wasn't his style.

What Dutch didn't understand was why they had shown up on his doorstep or why Chang made everyone else, including her, wait outside.

"I heard that you were looking to hire," Chang started amicably.

"I'm always in the market for talent," Dutch said. "But a company needs regular work to keep good employees."

Chang laughed. "Point taken. I knew that I was right about you."

Dutch said nothing, but his skin prickled with the preternatural warning of change.

Chang looked out at the window at the girl, who was looking out to sea, just as she had on the first day that Dutch had noticed her. When Chang spoke again, his voice was soft. "I think she would do well in the Lagoon's line of work. I'll rent the back apartment from you for her. Six months' rent, up front."

"Hold on," Dutch protested. "Pardon my old-fashioned ways, but I need a heavy, not a girl."

Chang seemed to ignore the comment until he was on the other side of the door. "I call her Two Hands. Ask her why."

Before Dutch could argue, the phone rang, and the voice on the other end was female with a Russian accent and offering a big job. Could he start now?

Dutch sighed and took it. The whole thing reeked of a set-up, but the job was the real deal, not some kiddie test run. The pay reflected it, and Miss Balalaika inferred that she would have more work soon if Lagoon delivered. He took the girl with him because he had no other choice.

She moved like a panther and killed like a reaper, each hands orchestrating its own separate opera of blood.

Because of her, Lagoon delivered on the first big job for Hotel Moscow.

"Good work, Two Hands," Dutch told her on the car ride back to the office.

She looked up from counting her portion of the pay to glare at him. "Name's Revy. Remember it," and then, quietly to the open window, "He's the only one who calls me that."

* * *

At the end of the story, Rock put his head into his hands. "'He would tell me to 'wake up pronto' from the office and I'd fly right over'," he whispered. "She told me that once. I had forgotten."

"That's interesting," Dutch said. "She doesn't talk about her Triad days much. My take? Mr. Chang sprung her from prison and took her in to atone a little, but our Revy can't hang with the 14K. They don't take women as members, for one, and she doesn't do so hot with the chain of command. Setting Revy up with an outside gig was the best Chang could do for her."

"I guess," Rock said darkly.

Somewhere in the distance, a lone crack of gunfire rang out. They waited for a second shot, anxious about the war. Time stretched out while Dutch tried to find the right words to make what he had to say any less uncomfortable and came up empty.

"Rock," he said at last, "it wasn't any of my business before, but I have to say it now. This thing with you and Revy. You have to make up your mind."

Rock looked up, stricken. "Dutch, there's not-"

"Don't fucking bullshit me," Dutch interrupted. "I don't even want to get started on your savior complex, but I know you want to save her, Rock. I'm here to tell you that Revy doesn't want to be saved. She's been aching to get back in the Triads since Boss Chang dropped her at my door. You're not seeing that because you don't want to see it."

"I can see just fine!" Rock started up, his voice rising. "And you can't deny that you care about her, too! Are we going to sit back and let her die in a war that isn't hers? We're just going to give her up because the Triads need another gun on their side?"

Dutch pushed back from his chair and went for another drink to give Rock a minute to cool down. He came back with the bottle and refilled Rock's glass without looking for permission.

"Listen, Rock. Boss Chang had been casing me. Even asked at Rowan's and the Sloppy Swing about what I liked to make sure that I wouldn't go for her. And he was right. Revy's kind has never been my type. But it goes to show that he cared about her. He didn't want anyone to fuck her over, and I can respect a man who watches out for his own."

"That doesn't mean that he isn't using her!" Rock argued.

Dutch yanked the chain on his temper as it reared back and howled. He breathed and took another sip of bourbon. "You're still missing the point. Listen to me. I'd like to think that Revy's one of my own. It took a long time for her to get there, but I won't deny it now. But you have to admit that what we're not that different from Chang. We give her a job, and she does it."

"I won't accept that."

"You won't? Think hard and tell me the truth. What do we have to offer her? What can we give her that Chang can't?" Dutch's anger made his voice into a low growl. "And most of all, Rock, when are you going to decide what, exactly, that girl means to you? Because, right now, you are fucking Hamlet, and the longer you take to make up your mind, the more bodies are going to line the damn stage at the end of the act."

"I know what I want!" Rock insisted. "We're a team, and we watch out for each other. Revy is part of that. I'm not going to let the Lagoon company go to pieces. I want it back!"

"You think I want this to fall apart?" Dutch roared, his temper finally breaking. "Do you think I want to lose it? To go some place else and try to start all over again? Fuck, I'm pushing 50. I'm tired of starting over. I'd really like to stay here and keep on going just this way forever, but that's not possible. This city is going to burn, and we can't stop it."

"I can!" Rock yelled back.

"How?" Dutch returned.

The silence that followed said more than Dutch wanted to hear.

In time, two sets of footsteps started up the stairs, and Dutch collected the glasses to return them to the kitchen. The conversation was officially over.

Benny popped through the door first, followed closely by Eda, who had changed out of her habit and into less restricting garb, which meant a scant skirt and a halter top that had "Stonking Great" printed across her impressive rack.

"Welcome back," Dutch greeted them.

"The drop went fine," Benny reported. He looked from Rock to Dutch and back again. "Wow, it's kinda awkward in here right now."

"I need to call Balalaika back to get to the rest of the details for the job. Then, we'll need to head out," Dutch said.

"I'll refuel the boat," Rock said nd escaped through the door.

Benny turned a baleful eye to Dutch. "Do I want to know?"

"Nope," Dutch said.

Eda rolled her eyes. "Men," she muttered to no one.


	4. Ciao Bella

The wood-paneled office stayed perpetually dark, despite the viciousness of the daylight outside. The sun could char the denizens of Roanapur like meat on a spit, and still Balalaika would need the desk lamp to shift through the mounting stacks of paperwork spread out in front of her.

The beloved leader of Hotel Moscow touched a hand to her temple and flipped to the next page of the depressing report currently demanding her attention. She needed coffee, badly. The deal with the Rip-Off Church had gobbled up the entirety of Balalaika's yesterday. She came back to her office in the deep of the night to be greeted by several miniature disasters, and only now could she settle down to the real task at hand: extending the influence of the Russian Mafia in Southeast Asia despite the opposite of the Triads, namely Chang's 14K.

Her body ached with exhaustion, and her head swam with information. Yes, coffee was an immediate, even critical, need.

Boris knocked once on the solid oak door before letting himself in. A frown pulled down the corners of his mouth in line with his scar, so the mark seemed to extend all the way from his forehead to his chin like a crack of lightning bisecting his stoic face.

"Kapitan, this just came in," he reported. He held out a crisp manila file followed closely by a steaming paper cup.

"Thank you. Just set it there," Balalaika replied. She gestured to the least unstable stack of papers for the file while reaching for the cup. The nutty scent followed quickly by that perfect first sip of Vietnamese-style coffee, strong and sweet with condensed milk, chased away the headache that had been gnawing at her temples. She smiled her thanks at her most trusted comrade over the rolled-paper rim.

The lines of Boris's face remained fixed like cracks in concrete, but his eyes softened.

"You should sleep," he said quietly.

"I will not rest until the interests of Hotel Moscow are secured," Balalaika swore into her coffee.

If Boris noted the weariness in her vow, he didn't let on. "Of course. Our units reports that the initial roll-out of our scouts was completed at 0400, but the munitions issue will slow down implementation of phase two, especially near the bridge and our high line at the rear of the city."

"When Dutch delivers, that issue will resolve itself. Have the wire transfers from our associates in St. Petersburg to the Church of Violence cleared?"

"Not yet. We are still routing through laundered account codes. It should be complete within the hour," Boris said.

Balalaika nodded and kept the coffee under her nose. The hot steam pricked at her facial scars. Even after all these years, any trace of heat could resurrect the agony of that long-extinguished chemical fire. Some wounds never heal, but that wasn't such a bad thing. The lovely pain combined with the caffeine rush to scissor through her brain fog. She almost felt back to normal.

Boris cleared his throat and waited patiently.

Balalaika took a final sip and reluctantly put aside the coffee to reach for the newly delivered report with both hands. Boris never told her what to do, but he only hovered at her desk when matters were urgent.

She flipped open new folder and began to scan.

After a moment, her back left the comfort of the office chair as she leaned forward to lay out the pages across her desk.

"So the Triads and the Italians have...?" she asked.

"It appears that way," Boris affirmed. "But there is little that we can do about it now. We need that gun shipment."

"Contact Dutch. He might encounter more trouble than we expected," Balalaika ordered.

"Right away, Kapitan," Boris nodded.

Balalaika didn't hear him leave because the papers fanned out on the desk held her rapt. Here were the blueprints of the war that she had been waiting for. She could trace the offensive front materializing around Hotel Moscow. She saw the battle lines forming, and they spelled out the promise of glorious death.

Her hands marked out the notes of Roanapur's swan song in the white edges of grainy surveillance photos and on the crinkled margins of street maps. They would strike _here _and _here_. She could counter _there_ and _there_. The thrill of battle hummed through her as she plotted the attack patterns, one after another. The sun-bleached anthems of Afghanistan sang in her nerves once more. _At last. At last._

When she finally put down her pen, her hand flew to the bulky cell phone tucked in her suit jacket on its own accord. A manicured finger picked out the well-worn speed dial button, and she had almost hit 'send' before she realized who she was calling.

The warmth of her excitement drained away like rain water through a gutter.

She had almost called him. In the fever of her blood-hungry jubilation, she instinctively reached out to call Chang.

Balalaika's back reconnected with her chair, which yipped out a leathery squeak in protest.

In that moment, the craving for sure hands on her waist felt as urgent as thirst on a blistering Afghan afternoon and as keen as the cold wind cutting through an ill-fitting, worn out uniform in a bleak Russian cemetery. God help her, she _missed _him.

For the first time, Balalaika wondered if she might be in love with someone other than Death.

* * *

Before Rock wanted it, there it was. A brand new day just as relentlessly hot and humid as the one before.

The view from the bow of the _Black Lagoon_ looked the same as always. Same white-yellow sun. Same shimmering spread of salt water. Same clothes on his body. Same hands and feet. His breath came, one lungful after another, whether he wanted it or not. He only tasted the acrid burn of engine diesel on the wind when he remembered that it was there. Nothing looked different, yet nothing felt right.

When had he forgotten that she wasn't as permanent as the sky? At which moment had he started assuming that she would stay with him, always, as near and as natural as the syncopated beat of his heart?

"Yo, Rock. Dutch made breakfast," Benny's voice came up from behind him.

Rock kept his eyes trained on the impossibly bright sliver of horizon where the sun boiled up from the sea and said nothing.

"Right," Benny sighed. "I'll just leave it here."

Rock heard the metallic clink of a steel can against the steel deck. It smelled like reheated corn beef hash. Rock remembered setting Revy's can of dinner down in just about that spot back when she wasn't talking to him after the incident on the sub. She had acted liked such a child back then, and there he was now, behaving just as badly. Rock decided that he had sulked for long enough. He spent the entire night on the deck, alone, to think about what Dutch had said, and he still didn't know what he was supposed to do. Sitting there wasn't going to solve his problems.

"Hey, Benny?" Rock called out as he turned away from the distant clouds and choppy sea.

Benny paused midway back to the torpedo canisters to look over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry about what happened last night."

Benny shrugged. "I'm over it. No harm, no foul. Besides, we have bigger problems to worry about." He pulled off his glasses and wiped at the lens with the hem of his garish aloha shirt. "I guess what I am trying to say is, are you okay?"

"Honestly? I don't know," Rock answered. He reached back and picked up the can of hash. Benny had left a fork stuck into glob of meat product, and Rock seized it to lift a hunk to his mouth.

"I think I know what you mean," Benny admitted. He took a seat next to Rock in the ship's bow. "Without Revy, it just doesn't feel right. And to think that I was finally starting to like this place. Looks like we're on the non-stop express to Screwedville."

Rock chewed through another bite of hash. Benny fished around in his front pocket and came up with a crooked cigarette, which he jammed into his mouth and lit up.

"You thought about what you're going to do if Roanapur goes radioactive?" Benny asked on a smoky exhale.

Rock thought for a moment. "No. Have you?"

"Jane wants me to move in with her." Benny shook his head. "Don't say it. I know she's trouble."

"I wasn't going to say that," Rock said. The hash tasted good, and the smoke reminded him that he could use a fix himself. Rock reached for his own pack. "She's a nice girl."

Benny snickered. "Trust me. She's only nice when she wants to be. With her stubbornness and shitty timing, it's a wonder that she's stayed alive this long. But you know what? To me, it's all part if her charm. I used to think we were just an internet fling. You know, something to pass the time. But that girl got to me."

"Really? When did that happen?" Rock asked.

"Not long ago." The wind made quick work of his loose ponytail, so Benny had to talk around the cigarette while he used both hands to retie the mess of blonde hair. "Me and Dutch came in really late one night, so I missed our nightly chat. No big deal. It happens a lot when you work on opposite sides of the globe, but this time, she asked where I had been. I told her, and she totally went off when she found out that we'd been at Rowan's place. She didn't talk to me for days, and I was totally miserable for the whole time."

"And that's when you knew," Rock finished for him.

"Yep, that's when I knew. She's a total pain, but she's mine."

Rock swallowed his food before asking the obvious question. "So why are you still here? I mean, it must be hard to keep up a relationship over long-distance."

Benny smiled ruefully. "I was trying to get her to move back here."

"Why?"

Benny flicked his cigarette ash into the wind before taking another long pull. "Because working for the Lagoon Company is a pretty sweet deal for me. Dutch runs the big show and lets me keeps my gear top rate. You handle all the tricky stuff, and just being associated with Revy keeps this whole crazy town off my back. Let's face it. I'm never going to find something this easy again."

Rock nodded silently.

"But if this all goes to rot, then I'm out of reasons to say no to Jane," Benny reflected. "She's back in India these days. God. I can't believe that this American boy would consider living someplace where hamburgers are a fucking taboo, all for some girl. I must be out of my mind."

Rock thought about the reasons why a defenseless former salaryman like him would stay in a blood-drenched city like Roanapur.

"The things we do for love," Rock said to the sky.

"Too true, my friend. But I gotta say that I'm nowhere near ready to walk away from the Lagoon Company. If I can stay, I want to stay. I'm just waiting to see how this all goes down."

On the starboard side, Rock could see a shadow of land cut into the sun's endless reflection of itself on the ocean. The boat shifted underneath them to veer toward the island.

Benny finished his cigarette with a sigh. "Looks like we are almost there. Better go down to prep. You coming?"

The fork clattered around the empty can as Rock got to his feet. "Yeah, I'll be right there."

* * *

The dock had been a little tricky to find, even in the daylight, because it seemed to pop right out the jungle. Beyond the few other moored ships, which were all devoid of human life, there wasn't any sign of the gun runners or their base. The place felt like a ghost harbor, and the foliage that swallowed the meager path that lead from the dock's planks into the interior of the island hung low and awfully wild.

Rock watched from the deck of the ship as the butterfly fish swirled in the clear water that peeked out from between the wooden slats and waited for Dutch to finish gearing up.

Eda tapped out her unease with her boot against a metal tie-off.

"Alright, listen up," Dutch boomed when he appeared at last from the innards of the _Lagoon_. "Balalaika just sent a message said that we could expect a little trouble. I want everyone to play this by the book. Got it?"

"Sure thing, boss," answered Benny from somewhere down in the guts of the boat.

"Right," agreed Rock.

Eda snapped her gum and tucked her Glock 17L under her arm.

"Is that a yes, Eda?" prompted Dutch with irritation dripping from every syllable.

"What? I got no problems," Eda shot back. "I know how this shit works, Dutch. I'll fall in sync if things get heavy. You know I'm good for it."

"That's the idea," Dutch said. "Oh, and Eda? Ditch the gum. You sound like a damn cow."

"Asshole," Eda grumbled.

Rock saw her stick the wad of pink under the railing as they disembarked from the _Lagoon_.

Benny's voice crackled in his ear. "Good luck out there, kids."

"Hope we don't need it," Dutch broadcast back. "You hold down the fort until we get back, Benny-boy."

"Roger that."

Eda, Dutch, and Rock crossed onto the solid land and pressed into the jungle that seemed to encase them from all sides.

"So this must be what a bug feels like in a Venus fly-trap," Rock said as the vegetation stretched out vines to lap at their feet. Leaves whispered what sounded like warnings around their ears.

"This is some fucking Heart of Darkness bullshit," Eda grumbled. A springy bough of river cane swatted her in the shins, and she hissed at the sting. "Fuck me."

Only Dutch seemed unperturbed by the wildness of it all. His footfalls were as silent as the movements of the sun, and his camouflage made him disappear into the dense greens. It wasn't hard to imagine a younger Dutch learning how to slink like a tiger through the jungles of Vietnam.

The path twisted and turned through the foliage, and Rock debated using his loose end of his tie to wipe away the sweat from his neck.

At last, the jungle path seemed to broaden. Overhead, they could see an antenna sprouting up from the trees, a sure sign of the gun runner encampment.

"About time," Eda muttered before running into Dutch's broad back. She scowled at the back of his bald hair. "You gonna move or what?"

"Everybody take two steps back, nice and slow," Dutch ordered, his voice low and stern.

From the rear of the line, Rock couldn't see anything beyond Eda and Dutch, but he had lived in Roanapur long enough to sense danger on the path ahead. Even so, the sinister darkness creeping up from behind him keep his feet stuck in place.

"I said move," Dutch repeated.

Eda went stiff as her guard snapped up. Her hand whipped back for her gun. There was the hum of impending disaster everywhere, but still Rock's feet refused to move.

"Oh fuck!" Eda cried out as twin blades ripped through the leaves toward them.

Eda stumbled as she turned to run, and she crashed into Rock, knocking them both to the forest floor just in time to miss the spinning kukri. Dutch had taken cover behind a knoll of thin trees. His eyes locked onto Eda. She nodded. Rock felt her free hand fist into his shirt.

Dutch ducked out from his cover, leveled his shotgun at the attackers, and fired. It all happened in a second, but true to her word, Eda felt into sync. She used that moment to drag Rock into the woods. The thin trail separated them from Dutch.

"You ruined my entrance," a man complained.

"So sorry," came the heavily-accented reply. "You wait here, crybaby. That nun shot me. Now, I skin her ass."

"Not a chance, bitch," Eda ground out under her breath.

The tiny blade buried itself in the dirt by her feet in response.

Rock recognized those blades.

"See, Rotton?" Shenhua called out in her unmistakable, broken English. "I said wrong dock. You said no. We had head start, but Lagoon here now. Boss Chang get angry."

"You were right about the dock. I apologize," Rotton the Wizard's reply came somewhere behind them.

Eda grimaced, and Rock contemplated wedged himself further into the undergrowth despite the ant mound bubbling up heavily manacled, warrior insects uncomfortably close to his left hand. All in all, the battle ants didn't seem like such a threat when the Triad's favorite assassin and her new partner were circling them, closing in for the kill.

A sliver of Chinese silk flashed through the trees, and Eda seized the chance. She burst up and sprinted towards their enemy. The Glock jerked in her fierce grip as bullets tore through the jungle. Rock could hear the thunderous retort of Dutch's shotgun and the _rat-tat-tat_ of Rotton's Mausers.

He did not hear the high, sharp crackle of Revy's twin Berettas.

Rock wished that he knew what he was supposed to do.

Something pinched his thumb. Rock bit back his yelp and rolled away from the ants to take cover under an umbrella-like elephant fern.

The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Bits of shredded leaves fluttered to the ground like so much parade confetti. The air was heavy with the scent of tree sap as the forest bled slowly from countless bullet holes. The voices came out of the dank greenness like spirits. Without a weapon, Rock could only hope to stay of their way.

"Hey Chinglish, how's that tunnel I gave you?" Eda heckled.

She sounded far away now. Rock marveled at her speed.

"It tickle. Now your turn."

Shenhua was close, too close. A pair of audaciously strappy sandals appeared in his line of view. He couldn't see anything above her knees with the frond of the elephant fern in the way. Rock tried to still the rattle of his breath.

"We've got no quarrel with you," Dutch's voice echoed through the trees.

The sandals paused next to the ant mound.

"We have job from Boss Chang," Shenhua answered. "Orders simple. No guns for Hotel Moscow."

A round from Eda's Glock buried itself in tree nearby. Shenhua didn't flinch; clearly, she thought that she was hidden in the ferns, too.

A rustle of leaves announced that someone was on the move. Rock glimpsed a long black jacket as Rotton raced toward Eda's most likely position. His Mausers chugged out shot after shot.

A branch over Rotton's head shattered as he ran. Then, a fern exploded near his feet. Somewhere, Dutch was taking aim at the weird, wiry gunfighter with his shotgun, but the jungle made it hard to get a clean shot.

There were too many places to hide, and time was a factor in the delivery. Everything about the situation was bad news. Rock couldn't hide under a fern forever.

He grabbed dried frond from the forest floor. Moving carefully to avoid Shenhua's notice, Rock jammed the bluntest point into the ant bed one, two, three times before the frond snapped.

Shenhua was on him in the next moment. She torn through his elephant leaf's cover and smiled down at him over the edge of her blade.

"Hi Lagoon Boy," she chirped.

"Rock!" Dutch shouted from somewhere high and right, much too far away to help.

The guns boomed from across the path as Eda and Rotton played cat and mouse in the trees.

Shenhua's blade shone with the forest's malice as it inched towards Rock's exposed throat.

"No Twinkie girl save you this time. She on our side now," Shenhua gloated right before she screamed.

Rock looked over to see the fruits of his plan at work. Enraged ants boiled up from their destroyed home, hungry for revenge. They had raced to battle the nearest perceived attacker, which happened to be Shenhua's shapely legs. Black-red legions coiled around her feet and ran upwards. She howled as scores of tiny fangs tipped with venom sank into her bare ankles and calves.

Rock scrambled backwards like a broken crab, slipping on moss and slimy roots.

As expected, his teammates zeroed in on Shenhua's cries. The jungle echoed with gun shots, and splinters of wood rained down on the area that Rock had just escaped.

Turning over, Rock clawed at the soft earth with hands and feet until momentum propelled him from a crouch to a run. He broke through the forest and found himself back on the scraggly trail.

He ground to a halt on the path and cupped his hands to his mouth to yell. "Rotton! Hiding in the woods like children isn't our style. Let's settle this like men!"

A swirl of black fabric appeared in front of him.

"Agreed," Rotton said. He tapped the bridge of his hexagonal glasses and looked to Rock through darkened lens and silver hair. "I, Rotton the Wizard, always accept a challenge. Prepare to -"

The blast from Dutch's shotgun caught the Wizard directly in the back. Rotton fell face-forward into the dirt.

"Ow," Rock heard him say.

Before he could relax, Eda screamed, "Move!"

Shenhua's kukri sailed toward his face. Rock only had time to squeeze closed his eyes.

A gun shot sang out followed by eerie silence.

Rock dared to peek.

At least 25 armed men had them surrounded by the picket fence of leveled rifles.

Rock could see Eda pushed back on the trail by three of the men, followed soon after by Shenhua. Both women had their hands up.

Rock looked for Dutch and finally spotted him ten feet off the ground, squatting in the crook of a jungle tree with his shotgun slung across his shoulders.

Rotton stayed on the ground.

"Which of you gun-happy idiots is from the Lagoon Company?" asked an armed man with a black beret.

Dutch lifted his hand. "That would be me. My associates are that scary-looking blonde-"

"Hey!" griped Eda.

"-And the Japanese guy," Dutch went on. "You must be McCoy."

"I am," the man with the beret answered. He turned to Shenhua. "You. Chink-bitch. I'm going to go out a limb here and guess that you work for the Triads. Get off my island and tell Chang that if he tries this shit again, I'll only sell him shells that will blow up in his face."

Shenhua smiled so wide that her eyes seemed to disappear and her face looked like it would crack in two. "So sorry. We go now." She trotted over to Rotton and kicked him in the thigh. "Up, stupid Wizard. I know you wore bullet-proof vest. Stop whining or you get shot for real."

The man named McCoy rolled his eyes and headed toward Dutch, who had jumped down from the tree.

"Sorry for the trouble," Dutch apologized.

McCoy shrugged. "It happens. The shipment's ready to go. Follow me..."

Rock pushed out a long breath of relief. Crisis averted.

Eda appeared at his side with a lit cigarette already in her mouth. A long, shallow cut slashed down her arm from shoulder to wrist. The blood ran like tears.

"Dammit," she grumbled. "I do not get paid enough for this. Good thing for the skank over there that our gun-runner friends showed up. I was about to put a new hole in her head."

Rock nodded as if he agreed, but the way that her hands shook as she pulled the cigarette from her lips to exhale undermined the nun's bravado. Rock wasn't fooled. Shenhua and Eda were wickedly talented professionals. Someone would have died the forest floor if McCoy hadn't shown up, but Rock couldn't say which one would have stopped breathing first. It was really a stroke of good luck that McCoy and his army had arrived in time to break up the fight before any real damage took place.

Rock felt the lightning fire of inspiration sizzle through his nerves. What if...? His mind seized on the idea, and his thoughts bloomed like mutant poppies. Suddenly, Rock knew what to do.

Somewhere beyond the red and white fields of his insane plan, Rock was aware of the movement of people around him.

Dutch and McCoy were completing the deal.

Eda smoked and shook and bled.

Shenhua supported Rotton as he limped away, and she stuck out her tongue at Rock and Eda as they passed.

Eda fumed, her face an ugly ball of disgust, but she said nothing.

"Don't be that way," Rotton chided. His voice was airy and soft, no doubt from the pain of the several broken ribs he must have earned from the force of Dutch's shotgun blast. "You are more beautiful when you smile."

"Get lost, creep," Eda huffed.

Rotton managed a weak smile. "Ciao, bella," he whispered.

Shenhua's elbow caught him in the throat. Rotton's head snapped back with a wet gurgle.

"Quiet you," Shenhua hissed dangerously.

Eda watched them walked away with narrowed eyes while Rock's mind churned.

* * *

"Welcome back, Cotter," Benny greeted Eda, Dutch, and Rock as they hauled the dozen or so boxes of weapons onto the Lagoon. "How did it go?"

"Shitty," Eda griped. "I need about a mile of bandages for the scratch that worthless cunt put in my arm. Oh, and by the way, everybody, the Triads are working with the Italian Mafia now."

"It's not nice to joke, Eda," Dutch said. He slung the last of the boxes onto the deck and went back to unlace the ropes. According to McCoy, they could leave the dollies on the dock, so the _Lagoon _was set to sail back to Roanapur any moment.

"I'm not kidding, Dutch," Eda protested. "That freaky Wizard guy said something to me in Italian, and Shenhua just about lost her shit."

"So?" Dutch asked.

Eda tried her hands in the air. "Fine. Don't believe me."

"You misunderstand me," Dutch explained. "We all knew that everything would go straight to hell when Chang and Balalaika stopped making eyes at each other. Those two are going to go after each other with everything they've got. Playing nice with the other syndicates is all part of the game. Just don't expect those alliances to last long. This thing's been festering for years, and now the puss will run."

"So what do we do?" Benny asked. He leaned on the stack of boxes that he and Rock were tasked with hauling down the hatch.

Dutch leaped back onto the _Lagoon_ as the tide pulled it away from the dock. "It's time to fly, my friends. We make the drop to Balalaika, and then we go."

"Yeah, a nice uninhabited atoll sounds pretty nice right about now," Benny admitted.

"Wish I could join you, boys," Eda said glumly.

"No," Rock said, his voice loud and sure. "There's another way."

Dutch crossed his arms. Something like a smile played across his lips. "It sounds like you've made up your mind."

Rock nodded.

Benny looked to Eda and asked, "Did I miss something?"

Eda shrugged and went back to her cigarette.

"I'm going to go out a limb and assume that you'll need help," Dutch said evenly.

"I do," Rock acknowledged.

"You know what my services cost," Dutch prompted.

"I know," Rock replied, as sure as he had ever been about anything in his odd, unpredictable life. "You'll be paid appropriately."

Dutch's smile was real this time. "I'm glad that we came to an understanding."

"Seriously, guys," Benny chimed in. "What did I miss?"

"Rock's got himself a plan to save us all," Dutch answered.

"Really?" Benny said. "Cool."

* * *

_A/N at unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash)6415_


	5. Golden Banner

In Afghanistan, men who kept their mothers and sisters sequestered in kitchens back home in the mother country had rallied behind her and let her golden hair be their banner. They followed her because they feared Death, and she feared nothing.

Maybe she had never learned to fear at all. She tried to think back. She remembered shivering in the dark as a child, but not because she saw imaginary monsters lurking in the blackness of closet doors left ajar. She had wrapped little arms around her child's chest and curled into herself, never crying out, because true loneliness is more terrible than any imaginary monster. It crushed down on her in the night until she stopped struggling under its oppressive weight. No one was coming to save her, she had realized. She learned that the world is as cold as a tomb before she learned to read. Her father's shame had walled her in, through no fault of her own. She had her dreams, escape fantasies encouraged by well-meaning (and stupid) adults, but when her country turned her one true talent into a joke by shipping her (just a slip of a girl, she thinks, looking back) into the fires of victorless war, the child who dreamed of Olympic gold and believed in redemption died.

They had meant for her to die, of course. That was the idea. Hot sands to smudge out the last trace of her father that lived in her name and her arresting, blue eyes. But she was reborn. In the miraculous moment that she stripped off the gas mask and took up the rifle to clear the path for her pinned-down battalion, the men fell into her honey-blonde wake and she became something new.

She became theirs.

Her old name held the stench of the past, so she shed it like a dry husk and let her men pick out a new one. They christened her _Kapitan_, but her sergeant told her that they called her Balalaika amongst themselves. Balalaika, for the Dragunov rifle that she could wield with preternatural precision even in the hell of battle. It seemed as good a name as any.

She had no real magic; Balalaika knew that much. To them, she only _seemed_ bewitched because she could shoot better than any of them on a normal day, and her coolness in battle transformed that feat into a dusty miracle. How could a daughter of Russia, just like those kitchen-maid mothers and sisters back at home, stare down the enemy's artillery? Her bullets struck true in the absence of fear's cloud, and her men worshipped her for it.

At night, she would drift through the silent rows of tents feeling as weightless as the moon. As she walked, she stretched out her hands to touch the canvas walls to bless the men sleeping inside with peaceful sleep. They were hers, and she would kill to protect them.

In those silent moments in the desert, she had believed that none of them would never live to see the snows of Russia's long winter again, but they did. Balalaika and her men returned to a country that reviled them. They woke up in thin beds, sweaty and shaking from dreams of a war that the new regime had white-washed from the history books. Even their ranks were stripped away.

Trapped in a windowless flat under a soap factory, Balalaika felt the walls of shame close around her again. She thought that she would give them what they wanted at last and die there, but her men came back to her. They begged their goddess to rise again, and she had refused at first. She had lost her faith. It wasn't until her second-in-command's death that she understood the depths of her betrayal. They were all meant to die in Afghanistan, and she had helped them cheat Death. Now, Death was coming back for them, vile and grotesque and tipped with frost. Balalaika owed her men glory, not shame in a gutter, and the new weight of that obligation gave her purpose again.

She rose up. She became a criminal. She turned a mob into an infantry, so she could find a glorious Death for each of them.

And they loved her for it. They followed the flag of her golden promise into Thailand. For six years, they waited, and she lost more than one of them out of carelessness in that time. Now, at last, Balalaika could finally fulfill her promises. At the massive desk in her dim office, Balalaika the crime baroness cleaned her side arm and prepared for another day in her Great War against the Triads.

The phone's clamoring jarred her out of nostalgic revelry. Balalaika took a breath and reached for the receiver.

"Report," she ordered by way of a greeting.

"We are ready for you now," Boris answered.

"Good. Any sign of Two Hands?"

"Negative. It's the usual Triad talent." Boris ground out the last word in disgust.

"That's fine. I could use a warm-up, don't you think?" she said to appease her most trusted follower.

Boris hated wasting time on inferior enemies, those gangsters in flashy suits with as much skill as children, but Balalaika felt the rust of disuse creaking in her joints when she moved. She needed to shine again like molten gold to move against Chang himself in the final stage. Underlings first, then Two Hands, and then, at last, the Heavenly King.

Her mouth watered at the memory of staring down the twin barrels of his pistols in '93. Then, inexplicably, her mind warped the image. The two black holes of his customized .22s transformed into Chang's dark eyes as they slipped closed in ecstasy. The unexpected rush of desire made her insides lurch.

"Is everything alright?" she heard Boris ask from an ocean away.

"Yes, of course," she snapped.

Boris accepted the rebuttal in stoic silence, as was his way.

Balalaika's momentary lust for Chang evaporated in the sun of Boris's devotion. How dare she dream of their enemy? Her duty ought not waver. Honor in life and beautiful Death for every man who saw the light of salvation in the surplice of her yellow hair.

"Wait for me to begin," she told Boris softly. "I will be leaving shortly."

"Of course, Kapitan," he said.

The receiver nestled into the phone's base with a muted click. Balalaika pushed away from the enormous desk, buried her pistol into its holster, and stood.

Her old uniform murmured around her as she moved toward the door. It felt like a second skin made of familiar fabric so old and so soft that she had to hand-washed it in the tub to kept it from falling apart. Her lost second's overcoat, too big even for her broad shoulders, settled around her. She never left without it. His coat was penance for her singular failure as their holy leader. She planned to wear it every day in life and let it shroud her in death.

Finally battle-ready, Balalaika made her way out onto the street where Roanapur's vicious heat meet her at the door.

In that first disorientated moment, a street kid rushed forward with a battered Polaroid camera in its grubby hands to snap her picture.

"Dollar! Dollar!" it cried in clipped English.

The child flapped the waxy paper in front of her. The developing photo flashed in the sun, and she watched the flat grey mutate into a riot of color that bore her likeliness. The gold of her hair glittered like a diadem in noon's brightness.

Balalaika saw the men waiting by the car shift uneasily, their hands slipping into jackets to close over the hilts of hidden weapons. She held up a staying hand. It was just a stupid trick to score easy cash from soft tourists. Brats in every urban center in Thailand ran cons just like it. She smiled down on the filthy thing in front of her. From her height, she could see fleas scrambling through its thinning hair.

"Listen, little one," she said in slow but immaculate Thai. "Here is a five. Never bother anyone on this corner again."

The child's set of broken teeth made its grin into something unsettling. With her picture still in its nasty little grip, the brat skittered away on skinny brown legs, babbling loudly. Another of its kind with a matching camera dangling from its unwashed neck joined it at the corner. Together, they disappeared into the street traffic.

Yevgeny frowned at her even as he dutifully held open the door of the Benz. Giving money to a street runt was like feeding a stray animal. All you were doing was prolonging its misery and inviting it back to piss on your stoop tomorrow.

Even so, Balalaika felt buoyant with generosity. The long-awaited promise of Death's kiss shimmered in the heat waves that rose from the oily street.

She fixed Yevgeny in her gaze and spoke. "Thank you, comrade, for tolerating my little indulgence."

He relaxed in the glow of her attention. His hand surrendered his side arm and tumbled out of his jacket.

"Of course, Kapitan," he replied as the cooled shade of the car swallowed the queen of all their hearts.

* * *

Her first shots went high and right, but they didn't miss. Balalaika never missed. These warm-up rounds simply failed to explode the Triad goons' heads like bags of borscht. Instead, they clipped off cheekbones and dented skulls.

The still-living ones fled before her, as she had expected. Her group would drive them down one alley and then the next. In two turns, they would round the corner where Boris and his group waited, and that would be that.

Backwards-fired bullets sailed toward her. Balalaika held her ground, knowing that the fleeing enemies would miss her team and yet hoping that they wouldn't. That would be too simple, and Death did not come easily for her men. She had to fight so hard to win it for them.

Her group moved in sync beside her as they advanced. Their unstoppable, heavy boots drummed out the certainty of victory.

No one could rival the skill and strategies of Hotel Moscow, but what the Triads lacked in training was blotted out by their staggering numbers. Chang's 14K well deserved that name. The disgusting partnership they forged with the Italians, and the tolerance of the Cartel that the deal implied, helped bolster the enemy's numbers against Balalaika's forces. Chang's unsavory decision made her war into a three-front affair: against the Triads, against the Black Hand, and against Watsup's bribe-greedy police force. Every street skirmish required another round of palm-greasing, and Balalaika hated it.

She hated all of them, except for Chang, and even then, she hated his choices even though she could hardly fault him for making them. Chang smartly stacked the odds in his favor. He secured a quarrelsome ally to rush into the street fights at his whim. He commissioned the services of that Taiwanese blade-slinger and cashed in his long-standing debt from Two Hands to put real talent on his side. He enlisted an endless string of foot soldiers to surround his high rise like a bramble thicket. He was probably asleep inside his tower now, or lounging poolside with a terry cloth robe while one of his men fetched him an iced drink. That was Chang's way. Balalaika had only been able to draw him into the fray that once...

The Triad goons' bullets crashed into dumpsters and buried themselves into the bricks walls. One must have been lucky because Yevgeny made noise like an unfinished cough beside her, and when she turned, his eyes were already dim. The body flopped to the ground like a torn sail.

She would never get over the twist of grief when one of them died, but Balalaika swore that a smile ghosted his dead lips as he fell.

"You're welcome," she whispered under the rattle of gunfire.

The lowly Triad Blue Lanterns bleated like livestock when they rounded the final corner into Hotel Moscow's trap. The rifles boomed from the rooftops and mowed them down.

Only one Triad offered anything that resembled a fighting spirit. He tripped over the bodies of his friends and dove into the limited shelter of a rusted-out car that had been stripped clean and left on cinder-blocks. He squinted against the sun and fired at the shadows of her men.

That final, desperate act lasted only seconds. Balalaika had replaced her weapon with a cigar before the ending boom of the rifles finished echoing through the cluttered eaves. She turned back toward the car and lit up. The first pull of sweet smoke bore the sharp tang of exploded gunpowder in a delicious contrast of flavors.

The phone in her pocket jingled. She took her time retrieving it from the depths of her overcoat.

"I'd say that went well, wouldn't you agree Sergeant?" she said with a smirk.

"Kapitan, I-" someone said, but Balalaika heard nothing more because it was not Boris's voice, and it should have been him, only him, and that could only mean just one thing.

* * *

Helplessness claimed her in pieces. Eyes on fire with tears that wouldn't come (because a goddess never weeps, because she taught herself to forget how), Balalaika looked down at the broken cot and didn't know what to do.

Boris stank of sweat under the cheap sheet that covered but could not disguise the mutilated body beneath it. Pin points of poison-red blood inked the white field of cloth and ran together. The last Triad's bullets had torn through the mortar of the building's utmost edge and flung the rough bits of rock through the stomach pressed against it. Boris absorbed all of the debris. He took each jagged bit of stone and bullet fragment. The onslaught shredded his skin from sternum to groin. She had seen the twitching worm heads of intestines bulging out when they gathered him up and raced him to the nearest shelter.

The awful scent filled up the small room and drowned out every other sense. One of the men who had carried Boris from the rooftops had puked up great lakes of half-digested things in the corner, but Balalaika couldn't even smell the sick over the the stench that belonged to the wriggling armies of bacteria and feces leaking from her sergeant's wrecked bowels.

"What do we do?" someone dared to ask.

A distant, clattering part of Balalaika's brain cycled through the list of non-options.

The hospital was off-limits, always, as per the understood code of Roanapur's crime syndicates.

The Triads had firmly ensconced Dr. Chiet in their section of the city.

All of the other back-alley doctors lacked the skill to cope with Boris's wounds.

He could not survive the car trip to the nearest city, even if she could spare a single man to flee Roanapur.

The phone at the Lagoon Company office rang and rang. Dutch hadn't answered her calls in three weeks, which meant that he had wisely left the city or equally wisely opted to avoid taking sides in the war.

She ran through the list again and again, and yet she could not settle on the only outcome left until Boris seized her wrist and rasped, "I don't want an audience."

"Out," she ordered, and the rest of her men slunk away like kicked dogs.

She moved without thought. Under the bed was a bag, and in the bag was a kit. The kit had a stick-needle attached to a vile of clear fluid. Balalaika found it right away. The morphine sloshed inside the tube like a tiny, turbulent sea. It drained into ocean of his blood through a tributary, fluttering vein.

Boris cried out in all vowels as the painkiller washed into him. The sound of his cry battered down the steel door of her heart. Balalaika found herself perched on the edge of the canvas cot with her fingers twisting into knots around his weathered palm.

Somehow, she hadn't planned for this. In her bloody dreams, Boris had somehow stayed with her to the very end. The two of them put every other man into the ground, and impossibly, she could drift into endless sleep with her head in his lap, safe in knowing that she had fulfilled all of her promises.

She had been so, so foolish.

"I never thought I would end like this," he breathed, and Balalaika wished that she could cry because grieving felt like that dizzy moment before vomiting, only it dragged on and on.

He kept talking. "I thought that I would be with you until we both left the world. I'm sorry, Kapitan."

She curled forward over his hand. Her hair tumbled down and pooled on the floor.

"Don't ever say that to me," she tried to threaten. "Without you, I would have died in that damned flat in Moscow. You called me back. I owe everything to you."

His laughter was the rattle of wind in dead leaves.

"I needed you," he said.

"I know," she whispered. They all needed her, and she loved them. Of course. Of course. Balalaika had not cut her hair since those sun-baked days. Its length coiled around her feet and measured out the years of their mutual devotion.

"No, you don't understand," Boris said. His hand stirred. His fingers fell between hers and tightened. "I was wrong." The tip of a whitened tongue traced his bloodless lips and retreated into the hollow of his mouth. Balalaika watched the words being formed and heard them on a split-second delay. "In Russia, we were selfish. I was selfish. We never gave you a choice to refuse us."

"I only did what I wanted," Balalaika argued in a whisper.

Boris smiled at her. "As long as you were there to lead us, we were happy. Kapitan, I was just like them. I would not walk beside you. Not really. As much as we loved you, we made you walk ahead. I'm sorry, Sonya." His hand wobbled in her grip. "Forgive me. Please."

Those were his last words.

Balalaika sat alone in the dim room with its horror of scents for a long time after Boris shut his eyes. His coma could span minutes or hours, but his spirit had already broken and fled. The body on the cot wasn't Boris, and the hand that she clung to like a child belonged to no one.

Eventually, the cell phone made its way out of her pocket. One nail tapped the right sequence, and her ear pressed the thin machine into her shoulder while her hands fumbled with the cigar and lighter.

A great man's arm stretched, palm empty and motionless, across her lap.

Chang picked up on the third ring.

"Just a sec," he said in English. A muffled exchange in Chinese ensued, and then he was back. "Well, this is a surprise. I didn't expect to hear from you."

Balalaika missed the striker once, twice, before she got the flame to spark. She held it to the tip of her cigar, sucked in tainted air, exhaled, and inhaled again.

"What's wrong?" Chang asked, clearly troubled.

The tenderness in his voice showed that he thought he could help her. Maybe he could. She didn't know, so his question hung between them unanswered. She wanted to say something, but she had no words. Not for him, not for herself. The accounting of debts and loyalty and devotion, which even an hour ago had been so easy to understand, blurred into an impossible tangle of alien figures. It had been nearly a decade since Balalaika had felt so utterly alone.

Miraculously, Chang did not hang up. He stayed on the other end of the line, as if he could understand what she needed even though she had said nothing.

After several empty minutes, she heard the metallic whirl of his zippo as he lit a cigarette. They smoked in silence, each one listening to the draw and push of smoke-laden breath on the other end of the line.

* * *

_As usual, my self-involved notes on this chapter can be found at unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash)6900_


	6. Two Hands

Revy woke up in her old room, the one she had long before that crummy apartment behind Dutch's equally crummy office. Someone was pounding on the door. She listened to the rhythmic drumming until it became just another background noise, like the drone of cicadas or the whoosh of the air conditioning.

Revy closed her eyes.

"The boss needs you," the door-pounder shouted over the steady pulse of knocks.

There was a time when those words would have propelled her out of bed with eager-beaver anticipation. She would fling on her clothes and sail over to Chang's office on the seventh floor with a big, cheesy grin smeared all over her face.

Today, Revy dropped a hand over the edge of the bed, groped around until she found a boot, and slung it at the door, where it collided with a hollow whack.

The pounding stopped, and the shadow under her door drew back and disappeared. Whoever it was probably knew that she would blast a few rounds through the wood if the boot didn't do the trick.

Revy stuck out her feet until gravity took over and dragged her legs over the side of the mattress. She sat up and fumbled for the pills on the nightstand without bothering to rub the sleep from her eyes first. She could swallow the whole fistful of them without the help of a chaser.

She tugged on the new clothes next. They were a present from Chang. He had outfitted her with all new gear as soon as he had picked her up from the Lagoon office three weeks ago: new double-holster shoulder harness, new pants, new tight-fitted shirt, new shiny pair of boots, all black.

The last time Chang had taken her shopping was right after he had sprung her from prison. After he paid off enough officials to get her released, Chang had the driver take them down to the shopping district where he let Revy pick out a couple of nice things to replace her ragged prison clothes. It was funny; all those years of shoplifting had left her without any knowledge of how to shop. There were so many choices, and everything looked too shiny to be hers. Revy ended up with the same outfit that she had seen on a mannequin: designer jeans with a matching black top. Respectable and normal and more than a little boring, but Revy hadn't cared because someone was being nice to her, really and honestly nice, and when she had left the store in the new outfit matched with a pretty ponytail for her long hair, no one looked at her with open disgust anymore.

"Don't open your mouth, and people might start thinking that you're a good girl," Chang had teased.

Of course, reality had to come barreling in to take that away from her, too. A month's worth of regular meals that she didn't have to pry from a swarm of filthy hands made her new clothes too small. She had to slice them up to keep wearing them. The jeans became cut-off shorts. A midriff baring tank grew out of the modest black shirt.

If Chang had noticed the change, he didn't seem to care. Whenever he looked up at her from his sleek modern desk in that oversized and oh-so-bright office, Revy always felt like he was looking into her instead of at her.

Today was the same. She walked into the office, and the girl she saw reflected back to her in the glassy shine of his sunglasses looked brittle and faraway, like a doll in some distant shop window. Her stomach kneaded the wad of pills inside of her. Chang frowned.

"Can you be ready to go now?" he asked.

She nodded while the killer in her stirred and awoke. It stretched out and filled her. Its fingers slipped into hers. Its heels pressed down into the boots on her feet. It stole the air she breathed.

"Good. Let's move." Chang turned in his sleek swivel chair, stood up, and pulled his omnipresent overcoat around him.

Revy the killer waited impatiently as he crossed the room before following him out the door.

The line of black cars snaked through the throng of traffic in Roanapur's midday bustle. From her window seat, Revy watched the people deliberately look away as they passed. Even the pair of uniformed police officers in the squad car parked down by the open air market bowed their heads as if suddenly absorbed by something on their dashboard.

Only a street kid in a stretched out t-shirt that hung past its bony knees and slipped off one shoulder dared to stare directly at them. Revy watched as the dirt-smeared thing solemnly raised a Polaroid camera to its sallow eye. The bulb flashed. The machine pushed out the developing photo from its thin mouth like a flattened tongue.

Even Revy the killer could remember being that kid- the raw ache of hunger tugging on your insides and the stench of yourself always under your nose.

As bad as the streets had been, prison was worse because, on the inside, you couldn't even swipe something to buy a real meal or a hot shower. Everyone was just like you. Revy had counted over five hundred women and girls all locked down in the same squalid array of bunkers where you had to sleep in standing water during the rainy season. Even a small sentence of five years was enough to kill you by malnutrition or disease.

Prison had been hell. Revy would still be there, picking lice from her hair for one murder that _wasn't _her fault, if Chang hadn't decided that letting a gutter-trash street kid piss away time in a Thai jail for his problem was too great of an injustice. Revy never much believed in words like 'justice' and 'honor,' and Chang claimed to agree with her on that point, but he sprang her for no other reason that Revy could discern. He had spent six months greasing the corruption machine to buy her freedom, and it wasn't like he could have predicted back then what she would become. She had been just some worthless backstreet rat then. When he got her out, she couldn't even shoot with both hands.

The line of Triad cars crept through the warehouse district. For one sick moment, the real Revy feared that they would stop in front of Dutch's place, but Revy the killer just stared out the car window with unblinking eyes. She didn't react at all when the lead car turned down a narrow gap between the sprawling buildings made of rusting corrugated metal and salt-eaten screws that lead away from the Lagoon office.

Since Chang had brought her back, Revy always rode in his car. Back in the old days, she used to drool over the honor of getting to ride shotgun for the Boss. She loved to see the jealousy burning up the insides of all the other guys, but now, Revy couldn't find a reason to get all excited about it. It wasn't like Chang ever talked to her while they rode or anything. He just sat there with a cigarette moving back and forth from his mouth to the cracked car window. He looked so much older than she remembered, and he didn't laugh like Dutch. He didn't crack jokes like Benny. He didn't scold her for living on pills and power drinks like Rock. When she was with Chang, Revy still felt lonely as hell.

Those thoughts were stupid, so Revy pushed them from her mind. Chang was Chang; nothing could touch that. This was what she wanted.

The car stopped. She opened the door and stepped into the day's heat.

Men in dark suits spilled out of other cars. Some of them moved immediately to defensive positions. Some headed toward the single, padlocked door in the warehouse while the normal ring of second-stringers made a loose ring around the Boss's car. Revy knew Chang still had absolute control over his personalized pair of handguns, but the code of the Triads demanded certain levels of protection for their leader.

"Kill them all. Make it clean and fast," Chang called out to her from the depths of the car.

"You got it," the killer in her replied.

Revy's stomach had processed her breakfast of pills during the ride over. She felt the tide of artificial energy rising in her blood. Her fingers itched to pull the trigger. She couldn't wait to paint the walls with blood. The darkness behind the door begged for her. Revy knew that no one else could hear its sigh-like song.

When she walked towards it, the Triad elite fell into step behind her.

Tommy Gui spat out a brick-red glob of betel juice. His Smith and Wesson dangled from his right hand.

Handsome Qin tossed his suit jacket on the hood of a Benz and rolled back his shoulders as he moved.

Shin-Shin sucked on his teeth and tittered something in Chinese in his creepy, girl-high, singsong voice.

Revy crossed her arms and drew our her guns. She aimed them both at the door's hinges and fired. The flimsy thing shuddered and collapsed inward. Revy kicked down the tattered remains and ducked into the dark.

Bullets came at her right away, and she answered in kind, even though she had to fire blindly while she waited for her eyes to adjust. She sidestepped the door to get out of the pool of light streaming in from outside.

Shin-Shin slithered in behind her and skittered along the wall to her right. He liked the close kill and the splash of hot blood on his hands. The terrified scream of a woman announced that he had found his first victim.

The insides of the warehouse swam into focus while she reloaded. Revy spotted a dozen or so men with guns crouched behind uneven stacks of crates. Another twenty unarmed guys were showcasing their asses as they ran from her toward the far end of the warehouse. Scores of women and children ran with the guys, and almost all of them looked like they weren't going to make it. A couple were already stumbling on weak legs and face-planting into the concrete. So this was the shipment of human cargo hauled in last night by the Cartel. Some kind of nasty puking disease had infected the lot of them on the long ship-ride over, and now the Colombians were keeping them quarantined until they could figure out what to do with a figurative fuck-ton of bruised fruit. That left a perfect window of opportunity to exact a little payback for what the Colombians had done to the 14K's last drug shipment out of the harbor.

Revy opted to keep her distance from the diseased bunch of terrified slaves. She dashed from pylon to pylon, using the support beams for cover while picking off the guards.

Behind her, she heard someone scream and looked back for long enough to see that Handsome Qin had taken a bullet in the thigh because the vain bastard stayed in the light of the door for too long.

Tommy Gui kicked at him in disgust as he pushed past and started to circle around to the left.

Revy licked her lips and grinned. Fine by her. Shin-Shin had already gone right, and that left her to barrel down the center. They could all meet up at the back and shoot any survivors in the back of the head.

The guns kicked in her hands again and again.

It never lasted long enough.

As soon as they got back to the office, some sort of emergency sucked Chang into another endless, boring meeting. Ever since she came back, Revy had the right to sit in on the talks with the Triad high-ups. She tried to pay attention once, but it left her twitching with boredom. She didn't bother with them anymore.

From what she could tell, the emergency was that a bunch of Triad guys had been jumped by Balalaika's boys, and now they were all dead, dead, dead. If the rumors were true, then this little massacre marked the first time since '93 that Hotel Moscow had killed without provocation or profit, killing for the sake of killing alone. It was the first posted sign of open war.

Revy passed groups of men huddled together like high school girls and whispering about it wasn't safe to go outside anymore. What a fucking joke. They should have seen it coming.

Revy collected the keys to the Jeep, dug up a couple boxes of bullets, and checked out a pager. There were too many chemicals jangling through her bloodstream to let her sleep, and when she wasn't sleeping, the only thing that Revy wanted to do was shoot. She turned the Jeep out of the underground parking lot and headed toward the unmarked dirt road that lead out to Chang's private shooting range.

She had earned her nickname on that field: Two Hands, the rightful protege of the Heavenly King. She liked to think about that perfect moment when Chang had smiled down on her because she had done everything just right.

"Nice work, Two Hands," he had beamed at her.

She would never forget it, not ever.

Of course, getting him to agree to teach her in the first place hadn't been easy.

She had been with him for nearly six weeks, which was just long enough for the worst damage from prison life to heal up and for the intensive round of antibiotics to run its course. She had brushed her hair that morning, and for once, the comb showed only the normal amount of hair loss instead of masses of rangy clumps. She remembered thinking that maybe Chang had a point about the value of fruits and veggies after all, so she hadn't complained about the mango that the cook put on the plate next to her beloved eggs and toast when she came downstairs to eat.

He had joined her at the table then, and Revy nearly lost her appetite because Chang never ate with her in the mornings. He never ate at all in the common room, and his unexpected presence meant nothing good for her. Revy hated herself at that moment. How could she have been so stupid to think that anything worth having would last for her?

"You can't stay. You know that," Chang told her over his steepled knuckles.

"Why not?" Revy challenged.

Chang narrowed his eyes at her over his sunglasses. Revy spooned the last of her eggs onto a nearly whole piece of toast and made an elaborate show of shoving it all into her mouth. She chewed and stared back until he broke down and smiled. Revy grinned back with a mouthful of eggy bits. Chang found her spunk amusing, and she had learned to use it against him.

"You know these aren't my rules. Look around, Revy. The Triads don't keep pets or women," Chang said.

"Well, just remember poor little Rebecca and give her dollar when you pass," Revy snarked. She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted.

"I never said that I was going to dump you back on the streets of Roanapur-" Change countered.

"Yeah, right."

"-even as tempting as you're making that option with your sulking," he continued.

Revy pushed around a mango slice on her plate while Chang watched on with patience.

"Sorry, Boss," she said at last.

"You need to watch that temper. You'll see no end of trouble if you don't," Chang warned.

Revy skewed a stack of mango on her fork and filled up her mouth before she could say anything stupid again. Her cheeks bulged out comically while she attempted to chew.

"What am I going to do with you?" Chang sighed. Instead of smiling again, he took off his shades and rubbed at his eyes.

Revy stopped chewing.

"I mean it. You can't stay here. I like you, but as a girl, you can't hang the blue lantern. I don't want to turn you out cold, so you need to tell me what you want. Whatever it is, I'll do my best to make that happen," Chang offered.

There were only two things in the world that Revy trusted and, consequently, desired: money and power. Her eyes glittered when she realized what she could ask of the mob king.

Chang leaned back in the chair, rightfully suspicious. "Don't push it. If you ask for something stupid like a million bucks, I'll let the boys dump you in the harbor."

"I want you to teach me how to shoot like you," she said with certainty.

Chang slid his chair away from the table and stood up. "Don't insult me. I told you that you can't stay. I offer you anything that you want, and you ask for this?"

"I'm serious!" Revy cried out. "Why not?"

Chang turned on her then with real anger, and Revy's heart dropped like a stone in the river. "Because you can't learn what I know in five years, or even ten. You are asking to stay when I told you that you can't." Chang shoved his sunglasses back on his face. "We're done here."

Desperation made her brave. Revy grabbed the sleeve of his overcoat before he could reach the door. Chang turned at her touch, and Revy found the barrel of his gun pressed to her throat. Fear froze every muscle but, somehow, her mouth still worked.

"Just give me two months," she breathed. "Just let me try. Please, Boss. I'm not jerking you around."

Chang took his gun from her neck, but the lines of his face did not soften. "Let's say that I believed you. The answer would still be no. Two months is a waste of time. I could tell if you had what it takes in a day."

"Fine. One day," Revy bargained.

Chang pushed out a long breath. "One day. Christ. Bad call, kid. I was prepared to give you twenty grand and a first class ticket to Sydney."

The next morning, Chang had his driver take them out to his secret firing range. He put a .45 in Revy's hands and challenged her to hit ten clay pigeons, each one set to fly from a trapper at varying angles. She missed the first three, hit five in total, and despaired. Then, he made her do it with her left hand. She only hit two.

Chang didn't say anything about it for the rest of the day. He cooly trained her from his lawn chair in the shade: adjusting her stance, tweaking with her grip, offering pointers on her aim. He worked her until the sun set.

On the way back in the Jeep, he lit a cigarette and offered her one, which she took. They smoked as they bounced along the rough road back to the main street. It all felt so much like good-bye that Revy could have cried.

"You know that very few people can hit even one out of ten," Chang said at last.

"So I did good?" Revy blurt out.

Chang sucked hard on his cigarette. "Yeah. Way too fucking good. And you got better as the day went on."

He tipped his head back to the stars. Revy held her breath.

"Two months," he said at last.

Revy whooped so loudly that the driver nearly plowed into a tree in surprise.

After that, Revy trained every day from the first moment that dawn made the world light until dusk swallowed the targets in the gloom. Chang came out to help her when he could, but his work kept him so busy that he eventually broke down and hired a Malaysian gunslinger named Row to tutor her.

Row worked with her for nearly two months. He couldn't help her with the use of both hands at once, but he worked her through most of the problems with her weaker left side. Still, he wasn't the Heavenly King, and Revy found it hard to respect him as much as her master. Revy tried not to complain lest Chang remember that the expiration date on their deal was almost up.

At the end of a normal Saturday's training, Row asked her to try for one more round. When Revy turned away from him to reload, he caught her upside the head with the butt of a rifle. He was on her in an instance with his hand snaking into her shorts.

She came back that night with a split lip and a huge lump just over her right ear. Row didn't come back at all. Chang took her out for pizza and set her up with a personal combat instructor the next morning. Her new trainer was built like a Hollywood hunk and had a thing for Madonna and Filipino boys. Revy liked him well enough, but she liked that Chang had taken over her handgun training at the range even more.

Weeks passed. Six months, then eight.

Revy overheard Chang raise his voice during a meeting behind closed doors. She had been waiting outside of his office to tell him about how she mastered the triple rabbit challenge that he had taught her.

"The girl was born to kill," Revy had heard Chang say in English. "She's an asset. Surely, you can see that."

The conversation slipped back into Chinese so she could understand the rest, but the voices were loud and gruff. Chang had told her that the Triads didn't keep pets or women, but that wasn't exactly true. She had crept back to her room and lain awake all night to come up with her desperate plan to make Chang keep her around for good.

"And that's when shit went bad," Revy muttered to no one. She shook her head. Thinking about the past was pointless. In the present, she just wanted to shoot.

She parked the Jeep and made her favorite area ready in minutes. Drawing her guns, she mashed her boot down on four random buttons. Four clay pigeons took to the sky at the same time, and she made each one explode into rumble. She pressed and fired all afternoon. By the time it was too dark to see, Revy couldn't take a step with crunching broken clay fragments underfoot.

The pills were wearing off, and her exhaustion returned. She must have looked like just another drunk fuck on the drive back. All she wanted to do was pound a protein shake and crawl into bed. The pager had stayed silent all day, but Chang might still have another job lined up when she got back. If that happened, she would have to dose up again. She had stayed up for three days in a row last week, and if the rumors about Hotel Moscow's thirst for blood were good and true, she might need to hit the harder stuff to keep going.

Revy yawned and tried to keep the Jeep on the road.

She had almost turned into the garage when she spotted a familiar classic car parked outside of the Triads' office. Revy slowed down just in time to see Rock, who looked tired as shit, walk out the front door.

Revy leaned on the horn and laughed when he literally jumped in surprise.

"You come by to visit me? That's sweet, Rocky baby," she said too loudly because she knew it wasn't the truth. She had turned her back on Lagoon when Chang asked for her, so that was the end of that. Dutch might not take it personally, but she didn't expect to be welcomed back, even if she wanted to go back, which she didn't, not really.

And Rock? Rock would never get why she did the things that she did. Hell, she didn't understand herself on most days.

Even knowing that, Revy swung the Jeep up by the curb and hopped out with the motor still running.

"C'mon, Rock!" she called out. "You could at least say 'hey'. Did you forget me already?"

Rock paused to squint at her through eyes so black-rimmed with sleep deprivation that he hardly looked human.

"Revy?" he asked at last.

"Yeah, who the fuck else would it be?" Revy shot back.

"How have you been?" Rock asked carefully.

Revy shrugged. "Can't complain." She tipped her head toward the building. "Why are you here?"

"I had a meeting with Chang."

"About a job?"

"Well, no," Rock answered uncomfortably.

Revy smirked. She knew this guy all too well. "So which poor, helpless victim are you trying to save this time?"

He looked at her with that guileless, open face.

"You," he said.

Revy's mind shorted out like bad wiring. For a moment, she couldn't think straight, but then Rock winced like he was afraid that she would hit him. When she realized what he was doing, she thought that punching him right in his stupid mouth sounded like the best idea ever, but she didn't do it. Revy was tired and didn't feel like explaining to the Boss why she decided to start shit in front of his office. She turned back to the Jeep.

"Fuck off, boy scout. Maybe some people don't need your help. Ever stop to think of that?" she snarled over her shoulder.

"Do you ever stop to think that there are people in this world who care about you, Revy?" Rock yelled after her. His voice cracked with fatigue. "Do you have any idea what it felt like to watch you leave?"

Revy spun around. "What the hell? What's the big fucking deal, Rock? I worked for Dutch. Now I work for Chang. I'm a hired killer, baby, and people hire me to kill. It's who I am."

Rock stood his ground. "You're wrong. You're not just some killer. You've never been a killer to me."

"What's that shit supposed to mean?" Revy growled.

Rock looked her right in the eyes. "It means that I love you, Revy, and I am going to make you see that there's another way for you, whether you want it or not."

Revy searched Rock's face for the lie, but she couldn't find it.

And then everything stopped working. Her brain, her heart, her two hands, her tongue: all of it just stopped. Maybe it was the drugs finally giving out. Maybe it was the way that he had said it, lacing that "I love you" with so much pent-up rage that it sounded like an insult. Either way, his words left her frozen in place like a stopped clocked while she watched Rock storm over to Benny's car and drive away.

* * *

_A/N at unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash!)7663_

_Oh, and if you think Revy is going to let this one slide, then you don't know Revy. Poor Rock._


	7. Wake Up

Rock wanted to let go of the wheel and sit back while the Dodge drove itself right into the harbor with his body still strapped inside.

He was brilliant, bloody brilliant. A real fucking genius. He had suffered almost a month of missing Revy so much that he hadn't slept until Dutch let him move into her apartment. He had spent all day, every day, thinking about her, until he finally figured out that he was totally and incurably in love with her. He had dreamed of the moment when he would see her again, and when that moment finally came, what did he do? He let her rattle his cage until he spat out his love confession like a wad of chewing gum on the street corner. He had just blurted it out. No preamble. No romance. Nothing that would make her do anything but glare at him like he'd just insulted her guns.

That glare of hers ripped him up inside. He could see a flash of it, vicious and hard, every time he blinked, like it had been burned into his retinas.

Had he really thought that she would soften at those hasty words? That she would reach her arms out to him like a child waiting to be held?

Well, yes.

God, he was so stupid. Rock felt like beating his head into the steering column.

And, to top it off, he had run away. When she stared him down like she wanted to rip out his throat, he panicked and fled like a coward in Benny's car. He loved her, and he left her. He had screwed it up. He blew his chance.

A watery death in the harbor sounded really tempting.

Rock took a breath, put both hands on the wheel, and made the last tricky turn onto his street.

He needed to stop being melodramatic. He had to calm down and stay on top of his game. Sure, he was upset that Revy's response hadn't been what he wanted, but he should have seen it coming. You couldn't come at Revy with a word like 'love' and expect her to know what to do with it. Hell, he should be counting himself lucky that she hadn't plugged him in the back.

Rock parked the car at the curb and reaffirmed his commitment to the plan. He would get Revy out of this pointless war, not because he wanted to have her but because he loved her.

With the car engine off, Rock could hear the static of gunfire from several streets down drift over the rooftops. He took a breath. Roanapur smelled like wet cigarettes and diesel exhaust, but beyond that, Rock could taste the clean notes of ocean brine and hibiscus blossoms. Like Revy, Roanapur had her own hard beauty if you cared to look for it. Rock adored the city because, for the only time in his life, he felt like he had found his place. Roanapur was the place where he and Revy belonged, so Rock planned to save it, too.

The whirl of scanners and hum of CPU fans greeted him at the office door. Rock tried not to trip on the cords the snaked across the living room's scuffed linoleum. The inside of the Lagoon's office had turned into a computer lab since Revy had left.

The light from an array of three LCD screens illuminated Benny's wild mop of blonde hair like a fuzzy halo. The frenetic movement of his fingers on the typing keyboard continued unabated while Rock lugged in the groceries.

"I'm back," Rock called out as he shoved the last case of beer into the fridge.

The stack of frozen pizzas found a place in the freezer, and one of Revy's disgusting protein shakes tumbled out when he tried to wedge the new tin of coffee into the cabinet. It bounced off the counter and rolled across the floor. Rock chased down the can before it disappeared under the couch, never to be seen again. The shake's can had a picture of a strawberry being electrocuted with lightning and "Rawberry!" written in jagged letters across the front label. It looked terrible. Rock popped the top, took a gulp, and made a face.

"How can she drink this stuff?" he complained.

Benny swiveled around him his chair. "Oh. Hey, Rock. Didn't hear you come in."

Rock shrugged. "Don't worry about it. How's the work?"

"Slow," Benny sighed. His neck made a disconcerting series of pops when he stretched. "Really slow. Janet's VPN is about as stable as quicksand, and there's a wicked solar flare that keeps messing up my satellite link. How did it go with Chang?"

"Not great. He offered to shoot me in the face if I ever came back," Rock admitted. The second sip of the warmish protein shake was just as vile as the first.

"Nice," Benny whistled. "You must be onto something with this scheme of yours if both the head honcho for the Triads and Miss Balalaika threatened you with death in the same day."

"Thanks. It's a real honor, let me tell you," Rock said. "Where are the others?"

Benny went back to typing as he talked. "Dutch is doing the nightly pick-ups. Eda came snooping around again. You would think that Yolanda would keep her locked in the Church with all the bullets buzzing around the city these days. But not Eda. She's convinced we're up to something, and she wants a cut. I gave Rotton fifty bucks and told him to keep her occupied down at the Yellow Flag. I'm hoping that she gets so blitzed that her hangover keeps her out of our hair all day tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath."

Rock nodded and choked down another sip of the shake.

Rotton's quirks took some getting used to, but even Dutch admitted that the pretty-boy bounty hunter had come in handy. Shenhua deposited him on Dutch's doorstep not long after the gun running incident. From what Rock could gather from her shrill and unceasing litany of insults, Rotton had finally worn out his welcome at her apartment, but for some reason, Shenhua felt badly about kicking his ass to the curb. She came by to find him work at about the same time that Benny had delivered a convincing speech on the need for more help. The timing matched up, so Rock agreed to take on the Wizard. The task was simple and direct: run the scanners, create the labels according to the guidelines, and file the hard copies. Once he got past the showy monologue, which Rotton launched into at the beginning of every day without fail, the Wizard kept a decent pace with a low error rate, which left Benny free to handle the back-end and databases. Best of all, Rotton worked for room and board (in this case, a make-shift bed on the office couch and all-you-can-drink milk), and he had shown up just in time to help the remaining members of the Lagoon Company cope with the new deadline. When Dutch had come back with his rounds to report that the Triads had offed Boris, Rock's master plan had suffered a severe scheduling re-write, which was why Benny was coding like a mad man instead of enjoying his nightly chat with Janet.

"You need any help?" Rock offered half-heartedly.

"Yeah, but not from you," Benny returned. "You're so tired that you can barely walk, and I don't have time to data-cleanse the system after you enter everything wrong." Benny paused and looked over his shoulder sheepishly. "Sorry. That sounded a lot meaner than I meant it. I must be tired, too."

"It's okay. I'm going to bed then," Rock replied.

Benny didn't answer, but Rock barely noticed. He dragged himself back to Revy's dingy apartment, dutifully brushed his teeth, shrugged off most of his clothes, and sank into bed.

Some hours later, he woke up to a familiar sound and an unfamiliar weight on the edge of his mattress.

_Click, click. Click, click_.

Rock sat up and blinked.

There she was, practically vibrating the mattress with all those uppers in her system. She didn't look at him. Her hands turned over the guns in her lap as she popped the clips, traded them, and shoved them back in place. A keychain dangled from her left thumb. Of course, she would have a key to her own apartment.

_Click, click. Click, click_.

"Revy?" Rock asked, suddenly wide awake.

Her guns winked wickedly at him in the pale streetlight leaking in through the bullet-hole-ridden blinds.

Rock remembered his nasty confrontation with Chang and felt panic well up inside his chest. Oh god. Had she come to kill him?

"I got a story for you," Revy said without a shred of inflection in her voice. "Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was unlucky as shit. Like she was cursed. Because everything and everyone bad in this world found her out, no matter where she tried to hide, and everything good took one look at her and ran off in the other direction.

"But the girl had a gift. She could make them all fall down. It was easy, so she did it all the time.

"One day, a bad guy turned out to be pretty okay to the girl. He took her in and made her strong. He taught her things, and he was nice to her. So what does the girl do?"

_Click, click. Click, click_.

"What does the girl do then, Rock?" Revy growled.

"I-I don't know," Rock stuttered. "Did Chang send you here?"

"The girl tried to fuck him, that's what," Revy continued in that dreadful monotone. "She thought that what's he wanted, and if she gave him everything that he wanted, he would keep her. But she was dead wrong. Because he didn't want her, not even a little. She had to pack up and get out the very next day."

"Revy," he began, but she silenced him with that infernal glare of hers.

"Right before he dumped her like a bag of fuckin' trash on someone else's doorstep, he told the girl something. She never forgot it. He said, 'Anyone who tries to fuck you will try to fuck you over, and falling in love is the fastest way to get yourself killed.'"

"That's not true," Rock protested weakly from under the suffocating weight of her cold stare.

"So in the end, Rock," Revy continued as if she couldn't hear him, "you can say anything that you want, but to me, love's just another four-letter word. You got that?"

_Click, click. Click, click_.

Rock took a fortifying breath and pushed forward on the bed until he could touch her shoulder. She didn't shove him away, but her body stayed as taunt as a line on a sail. Touching Revy felt like putting a hand on a wall- no warmth, no give, nothing. But Rock didn't expect her to bend to him, not yet.

"You're wrong," he said in a low voice near her ear. "I do love you."

The muzzles of her guns pressed into his chest as she turned on him with the speed of a viper.

"I dare you to say it again," she hissed.

"Just listen to me for a minute. You say that love is just a joke, and I don't blame you for thinking like that, but when I say that I love you, what I mean is that I am going to do anything that I have to do to keep you safe. I don't care what happens to me or the Triads or Hotel Moscow. I don't care about any of them right now. All I want is to get you out of this, alive."

Revy shook her head. The guns dug in deeper between his ribs. "That's real sweet and all, Romeo, but you're forgetting that I don't give a fuck. We're already dead, baby. Whether I finally stop breathing today or twenty years from now makes no difference to me."

"That's not true and you know it. You may not be afraid to die, but it doesn't mean that you want to give up. Listen to me. I've seen you happy. You were happy with Black Lagoon because you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted. You had people who cared about you and watched out for you, and you watched out from them, too. We stuck it out because we wanted to, and I will do anything to give that back to you. Why do you think that you're here? Maybe you wanted to Chang's on-call killer once, but you've changed."

"You don't know shit about me, never have. Think fast, asshole. Give me one reason why I shouldn't put a couple of bullets in ya?" Revy threatened, but her eyes stayed locked on the guns leveled at his chest. Revy almost always avoided eye contact away when she was lying. Almost always, but not always _always_. Rock decided to take the chance.

"Look at me," he pleaded.

"Fuck you," she ground out, but she refused to lift her gaze to his.

"Revy," Rock tried again.

The guns slipped into her lap, and then she was turning from him. Her eyes zeroed in on the door, and Rock had no choice. She would leave him at any second, so he seized her chin in both of his hands and jerked it up. Her eyes narrowed as she glowered at him, but Rock wasn't afraid of her temper anymore. He took his time when he spoke.

"I was asleep for my whole life, and you woke me up. You made me see things the way they really are, and now it's my turn to do the same for you. _Wake up_, _Revy_. You've had your eyes closed to the good things in this world for so long that you think they can't exist. It's not all horror, not even for you."

Revy smacked his hands away and snorted. "You think you're gonna be my good time, Rock baby? You been hanging around all this time because you wanna fuck me?"

Rock had meant to hold onto her, but he found himself pulling away. He knew to expect this- her anger manifest in words so sharp that they sliced - but it hurt so much to listen to her tear him down when he loved her so much. It was so hard to stretch out his hands to reach her when he knew that she would bite.

"I don't want anything like that," he tried to tell her. "I love you. It's different."

"No, it's the fuckin' same!" she spat.

Rock set his jaw. "Fine, don't believe me. You can pretend that I'm pathetic and stupid for feeling like this, but I'm calling your bluff. Tell me this, Revy: why did you come here tonight?"

She was so close, but he couldn't hold onto her. She bucked out of his grasp and scrambled to her feet. She took three certain steps to the door before her body listed to the side and she had to catch the door of his wardrobe to steady herself.

"Christ, I need a dose," Revy muttered to herself as she stumbled towards the door.

Rock knew that she was on pills again. She had probably slept less in the past few weeks than even him. Rock harbored no illusions about what dark cravings had kept her occupied since Chang had come for her. The Revy propped against the closet door was running on gun smoke, burnt coffee, and yellow pills. He knew how far out she was in those dark waters. She couldn't be reached with words, not just now, but that was okay. Rock was tired of talking and holding back and doing everything just _so_.

At long last, he found the courage to go across the room and collect her in his arms.

"Get off me," she menaced.

"No," he said.

She twisted in his grip, so Rock kissed Revy with what he prayed was the right amount of tenderness and confidence. When he moved to pull away, the whine of a complaint kicked up in the back of her throat, so he ducked in and kissed her again, harder this time, to make her understand.

Once he started, Rock didn't want to stop. Kissing Revy felt like slipping inch by inch into an almost unbearably hot bath. She tasted better than cold beer at the end of miserable day's commute in August. Kissing Revy was like...

She bit down on his lip, and it hurt so perfectly that Rock lost himself.

He kissed her until her mouth warmed and started to work against his and he felt her body relax. He kissed her while her protests turned into something more demanding and her hands tore into his clothes. He kissed her as she shoved him towards the bed, and when they missed it, he kissed her all the way down the long tumble to the floor. He kissed her until she broke free, breathless and gasping, and then he kissed every part of her that offered itself to his eager lips. He stopped her mouth with a kiss when she came under him, and moments later, her mouth pulled on his earlobe as he shuddered to an exquisite halt over her.

Then he couldn't kiss her anymore because his breath was coming in short, sharp pulls as his brain tried to process through the disbelief and the delight. He couldn't quite get over how, even now, his dark goddess was naked against his skin and tangled up in his arms.

"What now?" she said.

He responded by tugging her up and into the bed with him, where he wrapped her in the sheets and his body and kissed her to sleep.

* * *

Somewhere in the darkness, her pager chimed and shook. Revy tumbled out of Rock's bed and shuffled through the pile of clothing until she found it stashed in one of her pockets.

She pressed buttons until it stopped making so much noise.

"Damn," she breathed.

The numbers on the little machine weren't a phone number, but Revy knew it was from Chang, no questions asked. Instead of listing a callback number, the string of digits spelled out a simple message in code. "Report back. Now."

For a minute, she indulged her imagination and thought about ignoring the summons to stay right there with Rock until the morning. They could roll around in bed all day, maybe order in some pizza, and mess around until they were too sore to move. Rock would let her do and say anything that she wanted, and he would keep looking at her like she was something worth having. It would be the perfect day.

Right. Like that would happen.

Revy gave it two, three, hours tops before some Triad guys broke down the door and dragged her back to be the goddamn cavalry in the war against Balalaika. She had kicked in a few doors herself under Chang's command. She knew how it worked.

If the 14K didn't show up to wreck the party, Revy could bet all her ammo money that common sense would. She lived in a blood-soaked world, and Rock still turned green at the sight of a dead body. He believed in happy endings, and she believed that the end happened a long time ago and some sicko deity had forgotten to tell the rest of the world that it was over.

She and Rock were nothing alike, at all.

So they had fucked. Big deal. People did it all the time. She had done plenty of guys, and couple of them even said that they loved her too. It didn't change anything. It didn't mean anything.

Revy kept an eye on the sleeping Rock while she scrambled to get dressed in the dark. She carefully pulled the door shut without a sound when she left.

She told herself that she couldn't wake him up because she needed to hurry. Chang didn't like to be kept waiting. It was easier to just go without listening to some stupid speech about how he didn't want her to leave.

Because he would. If she woke him up to say good-bye, he would pitch a hissy fit. He would talk her ear off about how they could make it work and how love heals all wounds and blah blah blah. He wouldn't just let her walk away or make up some lame excuse about making mistakes and wanting to stay friends. Rock would beg for her to stay.

He would.

* * *

Rock heard the door close as he lay there faking sleep on his own bed with his heart hammering away inside him like a piston.

It felt like she took all of the air with her when she left. Rock would never get used to her leaving.

He stared at the ceiling and willed himself not to cry.

He was being selfish. Whatever happened to him didn't matter. As much as he loved her, Revy wasn't his to keep. He had no right to make her stay, but Chang sure as fuck had no right to make her go.

Rock thought about the way she smiled against his shoulder when she thought he was asleep. That smile was the real Revy. He just knew it.

Knowing the taste of Revy's kiss changed nothing. If anything, it strengthened Rock's fidelity to his plan. He would put her beyond this bloody business, even if he had to take her place in Roanapur's deadly masquerade.

He would give her a chance to figure out the mysteries of that smile.

He would.

* * *

_A/N: For the record, this story would suck, yea verily, were it not for Amigodude._

_For more of my endless prattling about this chapter, go to: unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com(slash)7734_


	8. Too Much

Chang preferred simplicity. He liked simply seasoned foods, minimalist designs, and women who didn't wear so much damn make-up.

Unfortunately, 'simple' never quite aligned with 'easy'. Things had a way of drifting into disarray if left to their own devices. Chang believed that simplicity came through conscious, continued effort, so he tried to keep making the simple choice.

Uniforms made life simpler, for instance. So what if he welcomed every day with the same outfit? Not once did pulling on the black suit and white shirt feel repetitious. Tailors had altered every garment to his frame, so everything fit ideally. Chang knew that he cut the figure of a mob kingpin in Armani. Never had a waiter or vendor slighted him out of ignorance because every level of Roanapur's social strata recognized his trademark sunglasses and white scarf. Everyone knew that the man in the black coat and smart, off-center part in his black hair was Boss Chang. He liked how a simple wardrobe choice meant that people knew to honor him with the proper amount of thuggish respect at every encounter.

Plus, he never had to think about what he was going to wear in the morning.

The same truth held for his men. The customary dark suit of the 14K meant that introductions were never needed. Barkeeps behind on their payments panicked in good measure when a swarm of black jackets pushed through the front door. The 14K's signature style also served as a sort of protective armor. Only suicidal delinquents were stupid enough to put a bullet or eight through a man in a black suit without recognizing that such an action would bring the unforgiving wrath of the Triads down on his foolish head. Chang lost fewer men and paid less in doctor's fees since the uniform became an unspoken requirement.

Uniforms had yet another advantage. They let people become complacent in their assumptions. For Chang, these engrained assumptions were all to simple to manipulate. Any outfit other than his uniform because a clever disguise, for instance. The Triad guard stationed at the front of the building failed to recognize his own leader when Chang slipped from his high rise dressed in jeans with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. The low-level Blue Lanterns only turned his attention from his newspaper long enough to give Chang a fleeting hard stare before returning to his half-finished sudoku puzzle.

Chang sighed. Maybe he had one of those forgettable, common faces that always reminded people of someone else.

The blue-black of the night surrendered slowly to the new day as Chang made the long hike down to the heart of the city and into Hotel Moscow's territory. Of course, his usual mode of transportation was out of the question. Luxury cars and chauffeurs were another part of the uniform that he had to shed in order to pay Balalaika an unexpected visit. Sure, he could have flagged down a cab or tuk-tuk, but Chang enjoyed strolling through the dawn-silent streets of his beloved city. A mob king rarely had the opportunity to go for a long walk, even though it was so easy to slip away.

As he walked, Chang spotted the traces of the crime war at every intersection. Bullet casings blended into piles of street trash with the rest of the litter. A skeleton of a car picked clean of paint and upholstery by a bomb took its place along the curb with the line of other vehicles parked for the night. Boards sealed up the windows of a laundromat that the Colombians had used as a front to clean money. A chain saw's growling echoed down an narrow alley.

Chang wondered whose bodies the Cleaner would be feeding to the fish in tiny chunks today. She had to be pulling down long shifts to be awake and working at such an hour. Few of Roanapur's criminal elite did any sort of business in the early parts of the day, so the majority of the activity on the morning streets belonged to the everyday citizens. Shopkeepers swept the sidewalks in front of their stores while their boys rolled out tables with brightly colored sun umbrellas and carts of fresh product or fish packed in ice.

He stopped into one cafe for a hot tea and a large cup of coffee sweetened with condensed milk. Waiting in line to pay with cash while the clerk chatted with another customer was a new and not completely pleasant experience.

When he crossed the street just one block down from the cafe, Chang passed the unmarked boundary into Hotel Moscow territory. The hot tea did little to ease the cold knot twisting at his stomach while he slipped behind enemy lines. If there was a simpler way to get his message to her, Chang couldn't see it. He pressed on.

Chang knew fewer of the streets in Balalaika's part of town, but he stuck to familiar landmarks and made it to his destination without losing his way.

The luxury car parked on the deserted street lined with girlish boutiques and beauty parlors signaled that his predictions had been dead-accurate.

He sauntered up to the Benz and set the coffee cup on its trunk.

The car's passenger window rolled down.

"Hey you. Get lost," the driver ordered in Thai spiced with a Russian twang.

Chang leaned against the trunk and enjoyed his final sip of tea.

The driver's door opened.

"Get lost. Now," the Russian thug repeated as he came around the car.

Chang crunched up the empty cup and tossed it into the gutter.

The driver had a neck as thick as his head and mitts the size of dinner plates, but he dropped like an anchor when Chang landed a punch at the juncture of his upper and lower jaw. Stuffing the unconscious body into the backseat of the car took the better part of two minutes. Luckily, no one appeared on the street to witness his cover-up.

Chang resumed his characteristic lean against the Mercedes and waited, hoping that the rain would hold off.

Five minutes later, she emerged in a cloud of acetone vapors and acrylic dust.

"Thank you again for accommodating my schedule once again," he heard Balalaika tell the nail salon owner in Thai.

The willowy beautician's eyes crinkled in a smile as she bobbed in a quick bow. "It's my honor, Miss Balalaika. May I expect you at the next accustomed time and day?"

Balalaika nodded.

The bells jingled as the door closed and locked. The shops on the street wouldn't open for two or more hours, but Balalaika paid extra to have her fake fingernails retouched every twenty-five days at exactly 7:00 am in the same shop. Chang had paid good money for that bit of intel.

Unlike his own guard back at the tower, Balalaika recognized Chang as soon as she turned away from the shop to face him, but her realization came too late. Chang had his weapon aimed at her chest before she could take a single step.

"I'm here to talk," he said evenly. "I'm alone, and your guy is taking a little nap in the backseat. You could reach for your gun, mess up your nails- which look lovely as always, by the way- and we could shoot it out right here or we could talk a walk and you could listen to what I came to say."

Balalaika glowered at him, but her hands stayed at her sides. Chang knew that she had brains to go with her skill and fierce beauty. Her best option would be to kill him right away, but she knew that he was telling the truth. Her scouts would have alerted her immediately if an influx of Triads had barged onto Ivan turf. He would not have risked his life by coming alone unless he stood to gain a tremendous prize. Curiosity alone would buy him an audience with her.

Besides, he could have pulled the trigger and killed her already if assassination were his aim. Balalaika had everything to gain by doing what he asked of her, but she still frowned the displeasure of being caught off-guard.

"You look ridiculous in that outfit," she noted.

"Nice to see you too, beautiful." Chang smiled at her. "Do me a favor and get over here."

"You make it sound like I have a choice. Did you forget that you have a gun on me?" she sniped as she stalked over to his side at the back of the car.

Chang popped the truck with the keys that he had swiped from the ignition and looked to his once-lover.

"I promise that I won't enjoy this," he said before reaching into her coat to extract her cell phone and gun.

She stayed as rigid as a post, but Chang felt his body shift into a lusty gear when the back of his hand grazed her breast. Hormones were a fucking pain in the ass, no matter how many decades you racked up.

Chang tossed her things and his own piece, a knock-off Glock that he didn't mind losing, into the truck along with the keys and slammed the lid.

"Let's walk," he said.

"If you wanted to have a little alone time, you could have rented a hotel room, baby," Balalaika teased as she fell into step beside him.

"Don't tempt me, Fry Face. I've missed those legs of yours."

"I know that you didn't come all this way just to flirt," Balalaika said acidly. "Well?"

"The Cartel is still a bunch of grabby bastards, and the 14K is moving to take away their toys tonight. I'd like it if Hotel Moscow kept clear," he explained.

A quick glance around showed that no one was tailing him, yet.

"You must think that I'm stupid. Why would I get in the way? Please kill each other all night," Balalaika snorted.

"I had almost forgotten what you are like before coffee. Here." Chang held out the still warm paper cup, and she accepted it gingerly to avoid smearing her drying nail polish.

"Thank you," she said quietly after the first sip.

"You're welcome," he replied. He heard the softness in his own voice and cringed. This meeting wasn't going at all how he had planned.

He watched her face as she lifted the plastic lid to her pale lips again. She looked dead-tired around the eyes and thinner through the cheeks than he remembered, although he imagined that his own face appeared much the same. He worked constantly, rarely stopping for anything more than a quick nap or meal chased down with a few gulps of antacid. He felt like hell, and she carried a greater burden because she had a personal relationship with all of her underlings. Chang knew what the last few weeks had cost Hotel Moscow in terms of men. He found himself wanting desperately to reach out and touch her, as if he could bring her comfort despite how many followers she had lost because of the 14K.

Before he could do something stupid, a door swung open just ahead of them, and angry voices spilled out onto the street. Chang couldn't understand the words, but he recognized Russian when he heard it.

He took Balalaika by the elbow and guided her behind a closed-up fruit stand for cover.

A blond Ivan stood in the street yelling at a petite Thai woman, who screamed right back at him. Even though she had the benefit of the sidewalk's height, he still towered over her.

The yelling went back and forth with both parties emotional as all hell until she broke down in tears. She buried huge, snot-drenched, heaving sobs into her hands, and the Ivan's face went soft.

He stepped forward and put one hand on each of her shoulders. His words were low and soothing. He touched her hair, which only made her sob harder. Helplessness radiated from his face as the woman wept. The Ivan cursed quietly and then pulled her into his chest. He bent down to press a kiss onto the crown of her head. With his arms raised, Chang could see the bloodied wound on the Ivan's side ooze through its bandages and onto his light blue shirt.

The woman fisted tiny hands into that shirt and shook. Chang didn't need to understand that language to know that she was pleading with him to stay.

The Ivan smiled sadly down on her. His large hands worked his shirt free from her grasp. He muttered what sounded like an apology.

The woman wailed and sank down on the step.

He looked at her as if committing her form to memory, then turned and left.

A pale-skinned child with Asian eyes appeared in the doorway.

"Mama?" it asked.

The woman rubbed at her eyes, sniffed hard, and stood. She scoped up the toddler on her way back inside and closed the door behind her.

Chang let out a breath and looked to Balalaika. He had always thought of her men as chaste warrior-monks sworn to love only her, but there was one of Balalaika's own abandoning his wife and child for duty. He wondered how she was taking it.

Her face had lost all its color. Instead of anger, Chang saw only sadness in her eyes.

He opened his mouth to find something to say.

"You didn't come to me so that you could gloat over the fate of our foolish South American friends," Balalaika prompted him.

Chang cleared his throat and started walking. He kept his eyes scanning the scenery for signs of trouble. "Right. I came to ask a favor."

"That is rather presumptuous given that we are trying to kill each other, don't you think?" Balalaika scolded.

"Maybe. You know that the Cartel and the Italians have been best friends lately, but the Colombians proved that they are greedy back-stabbers yet again. Our Dago friend has reached his limit of patience and agreed to let me handle the problem. In exchange, the Italians have agreed to stay home tonight while the 14K is on the move, among other things."

A twisted grin spread across Balalaika's face.

"I trust that you know where all of our delightful little mafioso lay their greasy heads, don't you Fry Face?" Chang grinned back at her.

"You always bring me such nice things," Balalaika said sweetly with a little teasing sideways glance at him, and Chang went hot with a surge of pride and desire. She was really much too beautiful when she had her bloodlust in high pitch.

Something flashed overhead, and it wasn't lightning from the gathering of heavy clouds rolling in from the ocean. Balalaika's boys had picked up the trail. He had stripped her of her cell phone to preempt a surreptitious call for help, but now she had no way to call off her dogs either. They crossed another street, their shoes touching the pavement in perfect unison, while Chang cursed his bad luck.

"Are we through here?" Balalaika asked. She laced her voice with boredom, but Chang wasn't buying it.

"Can the act, honey. The second that you step away, your legion will take the clear shot," he said.

Balalaika tested the polish on her thumb before reaching into her coat to retrieve a cigar and her lighter. "Don't be so touchy. They are just following their training. The only reason you're still breathing is that they don't recognize you without the sunglasses. Those jeans are hideous, by the way."

Chang grimaced. "Don't worry. They'll be out of your sight in no time. You're going to walk me to the edge of your turf, and someone will be right by to pick me up. We'll save the final showdown for another time. I wouldn't want old Boris to miss out on the pleasure of knowing who he was gunning down."

Balalaika's expression morphed into a hard mask of pain, and Chang could have bashed his head into the nearest brick wall. He knew about the rumors that Boris was KIA. He hadn't meant to poke that particular wound.

"I'm sorry," he said. "When...?"

"Three weeks ago tomorrow," Balalaika returned crisply.

Chang did the mental math. Two weeks and six days ago, he had taken a call from her cell. She kept him on the line for ten minutes without saying a word, and he suspected that something terrible had finally gotten to her. Now, he knew what it was.

"That phone call of yours nearly killed me, you know," he confessed after a moment heavy with silence and thick with the storm's building humidity.

"It won't happen again," she returned coldly.

"No, I don't suppose it will," Chang sighed.

They turned the final corner, and his pick-up point came into view. In a few steps, they would part ways.

Chang wished that he could kiss her.

"Has Rock been by to see you?" Balalaika asked, her voice muffled by the cigar between her teeth.

"Yeah. He's got some cute ideas about making a truce. Honestly, I expected a better plan from the guy. I answered his questions until I couldn't take his idiocy anymore and then showed him the door. You?"

"Likewise. I thought he was capable of...more."

"Would you think less of me if I told you that I had high hopes that Rock could find a way out of this mess for us? Because I can't see it."

Balalaika said nothing, and suddenly, Chang felt like an idiot. She wanted death- big, flashy, blaze-of-glory death. She didn't want him. His fantasies about her were the pitiful delusions of an old heart sick with unrequited love.

The lighter flickered then failed in her hands. Afternoon storms would break over their heads at any moment, and when that happened, her cigar would melt to mush. Chang couldn't understand why she didn't see that. Why was it so damn important to spark up right now, right here?

Another orange flame expired on the tip of her lighter.

"Damn," she muttered.

Chang sighed and stepped toward her. He pulled out and struck up his trusted Dupont in one sweeping move. He held it out at arm's length with both hands cupped to fend off the rising wind.

"Here," he offered while carefully keeping his eyes trained on the corner where he would be picked up and not her face.

She leaned in, and he wanted to touch her so badly that he wasn't sure that he could stop himself.

Her breath whooshed out and killed the tiny flame, and before Chang could say, "What the fuck-?", he felt the heat of her mouth against his open palm. He jerked away out of surprise, but she caught his wrist, as if to steady the proffered light, and held him fast.

From afar, she must have looked like she was just lighting up a stubborn cigar in the growing storm. Her men would suspect nothing unless he moved to touch her back, and if he did that, they would shoot him dead. Damn her.

"With the Italians and the Colombians out of the way after tonight, it will be just us again, won't it, baby?" she said. "I've been waiting for this for a long time. We can finally finish what we started in '93. I suppose I should be thanking you."

The pull of Balalaika's mouth, tender and insistent, made Chang's heart bang his ribcage around like a pinball. There she was, proud mistress of his desire, stealing a kiss from his hands under the wary eyes of her subordinates, and it was much too much. Until a moment ago, he would have killed for a moment like this with her, but now he couldn't take it. She only wanted him to finish their fight. And he wanted...

Abruptly, Chang escaped backwards in two steps. He made the mistake of watching her as Balalaika looked up with all that fire and sadness written plainly across her face.

His voice stayed smooth when he could speak at last.

"When the time comes, Fry Face, and we throw down again, don't hold back on me. I won't. I can't. I love you too much to insult you like that."

Before she could react, Chang turned from her and fled in a series of measured, unhurried steps toward charcoal grey Mercedes that had just pulled up at the end of the street.

She must have signaled an "All-Clear" to her men or else they were too wary of the invisible boundary that he had just crossed back into Triad territory to take the easy shot. Chang expected a bullet in the back, but he ended up ducking into the backseat of the car without any new wounds.

"Heya, Boss," Revy greeted him from the front passenger seat.

Chang procured his own pack of smokes from the front pocket of his jeans and lit up.

The driver slipped the car into gear and turned them up the long hill back to the Triad office near the top of the ridge.

Revy swiveled in her seat to face him. Anger throbbed in the cold lines of her face.

"That was a neat little show you and Sis put on back there," she ground out.

"Do me a favor and mind your own business," Chang sighed.

Of course, Revy would notice. Revy saw more than she should. It was her curse. Chang regretted putting her on call for his pick-up.

Revy turned back to her window. "Fine by me, Boss, but here's a little bit of advice: Anyone who tries to fuck you will try to fuck you over, and falling in love is the fastest way to get yourself killed."

Chang pushed out a lungful of smoke. "Don't get cute with me, Two Hands. Sayings like that are better left on fortune cookie paper."

"You're the one who said it to me," Revy growled.

Chang removed his baseball cap and ran a tired hand through his hair.

"You really should stop taking everything that comes out of my mouth so seriously," he said at last. "I thought you were smarter than that."

Revy's jaw tightened, but Chang refused to feel badly about it. He had work to do. He had a Cartel to destroy on his way to killing off the woman he loved. His sympathy level was at an all-time low.

* * *

_Typical chapter ramblings at unkeptsecret . insanejournal . com / 8982 (no spaces, of course)_


	9. Jaw

She moved through them and above them, twisting and firing, and the killing lasted for so long that her mouth hung open, gasping for air, by the end.

"You look like a dog," Shin-Shin howled with laughter. He stuck out his tongue and panted to mock her.

Revy zinged a bullet at his feet, and he danced away, tittering.

She kicked in the last door and found no one inside.

"All done. No fun," Shin-Shin sulked. He licked at the corner of his mouth and tasted the blood running down to his jaw. Revy looked away. It was red as ketchup, a gruesome Heinz 57 from all those dead Columbians smeared across his idiotic face.

Boss Chang and Tommy Gui appeared at the other end of the long hall.

"Two Hands. Are we done here?" Chang called out to her. The corner of his white scarf had turned scarlet, and Tommy's Italian leather shoes tracked something darker than the concrete down the long corridor.

"Over and out, Boss," Revy hollered back.

"And?" Chang pressed.

"Too easy." She shook her head. "Way too fucking easy."

"That's what I was afraid of," Chang sighed. "Should have known that the Cartel isn't totally stupid. They had a Plan B."

Revy frowned his reply, and Chang touched her elbow with one hand as he passed. His other hand punched numbers into his cell phone.

"Don't pout. It was a good night," he told her.

Revy felt a tinge of pride when he gave her a wink over his sunglasses, but then he was a million miles away again.

"Hey," she heard him say into the phone. "Listen, sweetheart, you can get angry later, but you should know..."

Revy stopped listening. She didn't want to hear it. She holstered her guns, cracked her neck, and felt the weariness roll back into her joints.

"Two Hands. I'll buy you dinner," Tommy offered with a solemn tip of his head towards the outer door.

"Oooo, dinner!" Shin-Shin rejoiced.

"No," Tommy said firmly to the gleeful psychopath doing the sock hop in a puddle of fresh blood. "Only her."

He held the door and cast a glance back to Revy.

Tommy Gui wasn't hard to look at. He had a smooth face that seldom smiled to avoid showcasing his betel-stained teeth. He fought smart, albeit with none of the miraculous talent of Revy or the Boss, but his gun-slinging was fair enough. It was his uncommon strength in leadership and frosty cool in all situations that made him a Red Pole on the rise, and Revy knew his invitation to dinner was as much business as pleasure. Tommy had ambitions, and he could use the shine of Two Hands standing by him to accelerate his climb to the next rung. In return, he could offer her a way back into the 14K for good. If she hooked up with him, Revy would score the permanent relationship that Chang had refused her all those years ago. Even more, Tommy was no fool. Revy had felt the heat of his gaze when they passed in the hall more than once since she had come back to the fold, and he had caught her stealing a second look at him. Revy would be lying if she said she didn't like what she saw.

But dinner? All Revy wanted was out of the sweltering, bloodied Cartel HQ and a cold beer within her reach. She felt too tired to eat, let alone flirt and nevermind fuck.

"Eh, maybe later," she dismissed him with a careless flick of her hand.

Tommy said nothing. He let her pass.

Since she didn't like riding with the Boss since she caught him red-handed with Fry Face, Revy abused her privilege and dominated control over the Jeep's keys. The night air whipped around her while she rode, music blaring, and Revy let her mind empty of troubles as she pushed down the accelerator. She lost track of how many miles rolled out behind her until she found herself back on familiar streets.

She saw him long before her brain registered who it was, and by then, her foot was already on the brake as she slowed and the Jeep changed lanes to greet him.

Dutch walked with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his typical cammo pants. The strap of a heavy-looking duffel bag cut into his shoulder, but his gait seemed as measured as ever. Dutch's face didn't register surprise when he turned at the sound of her slowing car.

"Hey," Revy said. Slowly down suddenly felt like a bad plan.

"Hey, Revy. Long time," Dutch nodded and then looked forward again.

She slowed the Jeep to a crawl to match his pace. "Yeah. Long time. How's things?"

"Been better, but I can't complain. I'm still alive, and my boat is free of holes. You?"

The rattle of an automatic gun shook the calm of the night's sky.

"Been light years better," Revy said and hit the brakes. "Get in. I'll take you where you're going."

Dutch grinned at her as her climbed in the passenger seat. "Damn, do I look that pathetic?"

"Naw. It's just a bad time to be on the roads," she half-lied.

They sucked at small talk, so the rest of the ride filled with the roar of the wind and the heavy metal on the stereo. Dutch kept on hand on the duffel the whole time, and Revy fought back her curiosity about its contents.

Outside of the Lagoon office, she dropped the Jeep into park behind Benny's car and found a smile for her former boss. "Last stop, partner. Pay up and get out."

"Thanks for the ride, but you ain't getting a dime from me," Dutch said.

"Asshole," she grumbled without malice.

"It's good to see you, Revy," Dutch surprised her by saying. He took the duffel bag with him as he climbed out of the Jeep. "Rock's in your old place if you want to pay him a visit. You're already here, after all."

He slammed the door and headed up the stairs. His hand lifted in a lazy wave.

"Miss you too, big guy," Revy muttered to herself.

Her keys still worked in the door, and Rock looked up from his stack of papers in alarm as she burst into her former apartment.

"Hey," she said too loudly. "You better not have drunk my beer."

"Revy, what are you doing here?" Rock said with mild panic in his voice.

It annoyed her, that whine of hysteria. Revy reached for the bottle of Bacardi over the fridge instead of the beer.

"Needed some things. Got a problem with that?" she lied.

"No. Help yourself," Rock said.

Revy applied the bottle to her lips and stalked around the apartment. Rock had made it downright respectable. Patched up the bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. Fixed the busted A/C unit. Cleaned the counters and mopped the floors.

Revy peeked into the cabinets to find his dishes and cups neatly stacked along side hers, sharing the same space but pushed to opposite sides.

"Is anything wrong?" Rock asked.

"What? This is still my place. I can't touch my stuff?" Revy fired back. That whine of his was going to make her hurt him soonish.

Rock's jaw clicked shut.

Revy checked out the closet next. She rummaged aimlessly through the neat stacks of clothing and the frozen parade of shoes. Rock rushed over to hover at her shoulder. His anxiety danced through the air, so thick that Revy's nerves prickled.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"No. You moved my shit. God damn it! I can't find anything," she snarled. The hand that wasn't holding the Barcadi flipped over the laundry basket and dove between the hanging clothes. "Where the fuck did you put my ammo? I had it organized perfect!"

"It's not here."

"No shit. Where?"

"Revy, are you-?"

She turned on him with the full fire of her irritation rolling in her voice like thunder. "I said: where is it, ass-wipe?"

Rock's hand darted out and swept the length of her jaw. He held up his fingers to show her the smear of browning gore as he drew back. "Are you hurt?"

Revy looked down at herself, and all of his twitchy nervousness since she had arrived snapped into perspective. Blood touched both her knees and dripped down to her boots. It smeared wet and dark against the black of her clothes, and even her hair seemed heavy with splatter now that she bothered to noticed. She felt disgusting, a female Shin-Shin fresh from a dance in the mess of murder, and there was Rock, pristine in his white, collared shirt, offering up proof of her sickness on his smooth, white palm.

"I'm going to get cleaned up," she blurt out.

In the shower, great clumps of red-brown things emerged from every part of her. They congregated at the metal lid of the drain, coloring the water a polluted crimson before slipping through the grate and dropping from sight. Revy turned up the hot water and reached for the soap again.

She had raided the chest of drawers before heading into the washroom, so she could emerge glistening and rosy from the shower in her best pair of cotton panties and a towel draped around her shoulders. She had tried this trick before out of sheer frustration and desperation for his attention. It failed miserably back then. Instead of going primordial out of lust for her, Rock had looked out the window, serenely talking about bullets and guns, and she had itched to throw open the sash and chuck him out of it.

This time, Revy felt sure, she would get what she wanted.

"Hey," she said, trying to keep it casual. She sauntered past Rock without a sideways glance, yanked open the fridge, and frowned at its contents. "Got anything to eat?"

Rock came up behind her, and she hoped that he would be a normal guy and see nothing more the expanse of girl flesh before him. The blood would be a distant memory in the nearness of tits and rounded ass. Revy waited, barely breathing, for his gentle hands to close around her exposed hips.

"Don't drink the milk. It's probably turned by now. Same for the eggs," he said, reaching past her to draw out the nearly empty water bottle. "I'll go downstairs for a refill."

Revy felt molten rage erupt in the center of her chest as she whipped around to face him. Her fist smacked the bottle out of his grip.

"Fuck y-" she got out before Rock lunged for her. Her back hit the fridge door, which slammed with a spine-jarring crash, while his unshaved jaw scrapped at her cheek and his hot mouth ripped the breath from her throat.

His shameless hands found her out. Revy gasped her delight into the fire of his kiss and the roughness in his touch, but then, without warning, he was gone. Revy's eyes snapped open to find Rock holding her, literally, at arm's length. He schooled those greedy hands into ready soldiers at each of her shoulders to keep as far away as locked elbows would permit.

"If you're hungry, I can make us some noodles," he offered in that faltering, sweet-guy voice of his. "I'll get the water first."

"Wait, what-?" Revy started to say, but Rock had already left her shivering against the fridge with her wet hair soaking up the chill of metal and passing it down her naked back to her bare thighs.

Suddenly, it was Chang's bedroom all over again with the memory of stiff red lace gnawing on the tenderest parts of her and the ghost of that horrid look of pity shredding her dearest hopes. Revy never cried because it felt exactly like standing still and waiting for the end. She hated nothing more than surrender, so she moved through the room and killed the order that Rock had brought to her once perfectly disheveled home. She ripped out the drawers and divorced his things from hers- the shorts, the matched socks, the lonely stack of t-shirts. She evicted his button-down shirts from the closet, tore down his ties from the rack behind the door, and flung his toothbrush from the mug by the bathroom sink. His shampoo bottle bled green ooze down the walls of the shower, and the kitchen sink filled with an unholy brew of bad milk, rotten eggs, ripe fruit, and brown rice. Anything burnable went into the pyre of Rock's effects in the center of the room, and when she had nothing left to pull down in that tiny apartment, Revy wiped the sweat from the back of her neck and searched for a spark to start the blaze.

She had the lighter in her hand when the groan of the door hinges announced Rock's return.

"The machine downstairs was out, so I..." he trailed off.

She spun to face him, prepared for his shock and hungry for that wounded look that she knew how to twist out of him, but Rock only had eyes for her. He looked through the mess and found her face, and his sympathy hurt so much worse than anything else that he could ever do to her.

"Revy," he began, all soft and sweet and full of understanding.

"Get out," Revy menaced. Her guns were on the bed, but she could have them in less than a second.

The refilled water bottle dripped with condensation. The droplets bounced off the linoleum and splattered on Rock's carefully polished shoes.

"I mean it. Get out," she repeated. Her fists tightened against her sides.

Rock turned, and for a heart-stopping moment, Revy thought that he would take her at her word. The door closed with him still inside, and when he turned the deadbolt, Revy heard the lock of her failure echo through the small, sad room.

Her head dropped to her chest.

When Rock talked, she lost. Revy only won when she moved, but she wouldn't, couldn't, move against him. Rock had called her bluff; she didn't have the strength to kill him. She tried so many times to make him faraway and meaningless, but Rock had her from the inside. He'd had her from start, even if the idiot didn't know it.

"I'm sorry," he murmured from across the room.

"Save it," she hissed from behind the curtain of her still-damp hair. She didn't remember where the towel had gone.

Revy waited for the words that would undo her, furious at herself for allowing him to gain the advantage. He could stand across the room and ease her into submission with his careful speeches and immaculate logic. He'd let her down so easy that she wouldn't feel the cuts until she saw the blood. Revy waited for the beginning of the end in his voice, but she heard the zip of his tie loosening instead. The muted click of buttons and the sweep of discarded cloth followed. She looked up in time to see Rock, barefoot and shirtless, coming to her. The heat of his skin surged against her near-nakedness as his arms closed around her.

He held her fast, and she allowed herself to have the moment before she intended to kick his ass.

He pushed back her hair and whispered, "I'm sorry" again, sincerely this time and oh-so-softly against her ear.

"Don't," she tried, but Rock touched a kiss to her temple and she stilled under his caress, hardly daring to breath lest the spell break.

"I was trying _not_ to hurt you," he said bitterly. "Revy, I got it all wrong. I didn't want you to think that I only wanted you for... Damn it. I'm sorry."

"Whatever," she huffed, but her traitor body melted into his warmth. She wanted him so much that she couldn't stop. Revy found his mouth hot and ready when she asked for it, but his kisses lingered like a sugar dissolving into iced tea and she had no patience.

"Listen, you gotta level. Do you want me or not?" she pulled back to growl at him.

His hand fisted into her hair and yanked back hard in response. She cried out as his teeth found her exposed throat.

"Revy." Her name on his lips sounded like an exaltation. She heard everything that she wanted in that singular utterance.

"_Now_," she ordered.

He forced her back to the bed until her legs hit the edge of the mattress, and she dragged him down with her as she fell.

After the world broke apart and reassembled in softer shades of black, Rock leaned down and kissed her again. The kiss asked for nothing. It lived in total isolation from the need of the body and the cravings of the heart. It just _was_, and Revy had felt nothing as easy and as beautiful in her sad collection of hard-edged years.

His hand settled on her stomach.

"How long until you have to go back?" Rock asked in a low voice.

"I dunno. We just did it up big, so I probably have time," Revy answered while her drowsy eyes drifted closed.

His hand flattened against the tightness in her gut and eased out her troubles. Sleep weighed on her senses, and his warmth promised empty dreams.

"Don't go," Rock said, like it was that simple.

Revy cracked an eye to glare at him. "Don't be stupid."

"It's not stupid." Rock propped up his head on her free hand with an elbow wedged over her shoulder and his lean chest stretched along the length of hers. "How much would you need to be happy?"

Revy threw an arm over her eyes and ignored him.

"C'mon, Revy. I want to know. How much?"

Revy made each word sharp and fast, like Shenhua's knives. "Don't matter none. I don't like make-believe, Rock. It's a waste of time."

Rock's hand left its perch on her center and dove under the pillows to retract a heavy envelope, which he lay across her center like a burnt offering. Revy could smell the rot of money drifting from the papered weight resting over her navel.

"I need you to tell me how much it would take for you to leave Roanapur," he said.

Revy's feet caught in the tangle of the sheets when she kicked free from his now-suffocating heat. The envelope slid off her stomach. It collided with the floor and spilt open. Greenbacks fanned out at her feet with the intoxicating whisper of cotton paper.

"I ain't no whore. You can't buy me," Revy said, all pride and determination even though she had a toe sweetly buried in a collapsed stack of hundreds.

"It's a little over $5,000," Rock explained. His head dropped onto her tattooed shoulder, and his breath curled along the patterns emblazoned on her skin. "Seed money. Enough to get you out of here and hold you until I can get you more."

Revy weighed his words before answering. "You want to make a break for it. Get out of Dodge before Roanapur goes all Hiroshima. Bad news, baby. I can't, and even if I could, you would just weigh me down. I can't babysit you and try to earn back my rep someplace new. It doesn't work like that."

"What if it was just you? What if you didn't have to work? How much would that take?" Rock pressed.

"This ain't my game. Don't play with me," Revy warned him. She shoved him away and searched for her clothes. She remembered the blood-stained ones on the floor in the bathroom and headed to the closet instead. Her hands made quick work of her still-damp hair as she moved, and the band that she kept on her wrist secured the ponytail at her back of her head.

"Hey," he called after her. "I'm not playing around. I want something better for you-"

"Save your love poems. I ain't impressed," Revy said. The second boot poked out from under the bath mat, and she ducked into the washroom to collect the last piece of her outfit.

"Please, just listen to me."

"I gotta go," Revy said flatly.

"Damn it!"

A crash sounded like the crack of a rifle, and Revy couldn't believe the input from her eyes. Rock's fist had made a neat crater in the drywall, and he stood there panting with his hand half-buried in the wall.

Revy whistled low. "Nice temper there, ace. Hope you're gonna fix that 'cause I'm not doing it."

"Just shut up for a second, will you?" Rock raged.

Revy blinked. "What?"

"Just stop! I am trying so hard to give you anything that you want," Rock yelled. "I'm not kidding around. Tell me. How much will it take to get you clear of this?"

He gestured at the beauty and the mess of the room.

"Hundred grand a year, minimum," Revy admitted. "It hurt?"

"What?"

"Your hand, dumb ass. The thing you just put through the wall."

Rock winced as he extracted his knuckles from the fractured plaster. "Yeah."

"I keep an ice pack in the freezer. It should still be there, unless you junked it."

"Thanks." His voice had that nice-guy quality back. Revy felt the invisible bands across her chest relax to let her breath again.

"Are you still hungry? I'll make us something," Rock offered.

Her memory didn't work far enough back to remember someone making her dinner, and she couldn't say no.

Honestly, it wasn't much. Just noodles and broth with a few reconstituted veggies and the occasional floating hunk of processed meat. Even so, it tasted delicious with all that salt and spice. She drank it down with her legs dangling off the mattress and sweeping twin ravines in the piles of Rock's crumbled things on the floor.

He took a seat next to her, and they ate until the silence broke her down.

"I am what I am, Rock baby," she told him over the rim of the soup bowl. "You can't make me into something else."

"I know," Rock admitted miserably. He poked at the nest of noodles at the bottom of his matching bowl. "But haven't you ever wanted to be?"

"Nope." Revy shook her head. "The only thing I want to be is me, with more money."

"Killing isn't the only thing you could be good at, you know," Rock pointed out.

Revy snorted. "Don't start this again."

Rock slumped backwards on the bed, careful to balance his soup on his chest. "Fine. But if you have a hundred thousand a year, what would you do?"

"Move someplace nicer than this. Drink all day on the beach and party all night in a bar." Revy blew out a long breath. "Whaddya want from me? I'm not going to take up cooking or adopting orphans."

"And if you could get the money to do it, you would. Right?" Rock pressed.

"Yeah, sure," Revy shrugged, not really sure at all but willing to lie a little if he needed to hear it. "Why work when you don't have to?"

The silence descended again.

After a few stilted minutes, Rock sat up and took her emptied bowl with him back to the kitchen. Revy punched the pillow a few times before settling down on the bed. The carbs from the noodles made her feel sleepy and full.

The wash of water in the sink and clatter of newly cleaned dishes on the drying rack drifted over her as she closed her eyes again. The room went dark when he turned out the lights, and Rock cursed as he stumbled to cross the littered floor to the bed. He climbed in next to her, and she inched forward to make room for him. His arms twined around her.

"You didn't have to wreck the room. I suppose you're going to make me clean it up," Rock said with that whine again.

Revy didn't mind it so much this time. Revy poked him with her elbow. "You were being a dick."

"I was not."

"Yeah, yeah."

His arms tightened around her.

"Revy?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't say anything. I left the money on the counter by the door. Take it when you go. Inside, there's a card with an account number on it. If you get the chance, I want you to leave. Don't worry. Just go. I'll take care of you. I promise. A hundred grand."

"Rock-"

"Shhhh..."

He tipped her face to his and kissed her in the dark, kissed her breathless and happy until she forgot that she wanted to argue.

Sometime later, Revy gave him that kiss back, although he wouldn't know it because he was wholly and soundly asleep. He kept his position, curled around a her that wasn't there anymore, while she dressed in the dimness. Leaving wasn't so easy this time, but terrifying thought of saying good-bye compelled her to get away.

Her hand slipped out and claimed the envelope as the rest of her ducked out the door into the breaking day.

* * *

_A/N: Typical blah-blah in the typical place. _


	10. Drown

If he leaves his apartment before 5:30 am, he can be on the links to tee off at exactly 6 am, which is the earliest start time that the club will allow. He figured that he could get in eight holes, maybe nine, before one of his men shows up to collect him. Someone is bound to drag him back to the office, even though it is his day off. Not even the dead could have failed to notice the gunfire that kept the entire city awake for most of the night. He thought that it would be better to take in this one last, small pleasure than hurry to the station. He already dreaded the insane stack of paperwork which was without doubt waiting on his secretary's desk. The forms alone would consume his entire August.

The most depressing part was that all those bullets and bodies made no lick of difference. The gang war showed no sign of slowing, and it didn't take a genius to see that normal befriend-abuse-betray cycle of Roanapur's crime syndicates had lost its center. Clearly, something had fractured the oddly trusting relationship between Boss Chang and Balalaika that had let the city flourish since 1993. Now, alliances were brokered and broken with dizzying speed as the competing mafias let their long-festering animosity and greed explode like a zit on a fat man's ass. While the big boys battled, the vile little street gangs that usually skulked in the outer rim took advantage of the distractions to swarm in and lap up any neglected business. Their maniacal avarice meant that no quarter of the city was safe anymore. Those idiots would plug their own grandmothers for a New Year's bonus, so it was only a matter of time before the civilian death toll went up and got noticed beyond the city limits. The whole disgusting mess made his guts turn, even as his secret bank accounts bloomed.

He didn't need to read the reports from his detectives to know the score. Two months ago, the Italians agreed to help bring in the Colombians, who had been all but evicted after that wacky maid fiasco, in exchange for a larger chunk of the cocaine trade. The Cartel (still headed in Thailand by Abrego) quickly double-crossed their benefactors once back on Roanapur's soil by teaming up with the Triad in order to get out of their unprofitable covenants with Ronny the Jaws and his old world Mafia. The Triads, in turn, did a better job of impeding the returning Cartel's progress than helping them, so the Colombians got uppity and exploded a 14K drug ship docked the harbor in absolute daylight, no less. The Chinese took a little revenge, the Italians finally put together that they had been had, and Colombians found themselves grabbing their ankles and waiting to get fucked. The appearance of one of Chang's boys in his office to extend an appropriate bribe confirmed that the 14K had asserted its right to be the fucker, and the whole thing went down in the previous night.

He wondered if this meant that he was now SOL in feeding his budding addiction to _arepas_.

Sighing, he locked up with his unfortunate pre-furnished apartment, trudged out to the dingy covered parking area, and climbed into his late model car in the quiet of the morning. At the first stoplight, he briefly considered his normal route to the club. The coffee had taken a little too long to brew, and he could really use those five minutes back. Still, five minutes wasn't worth the risk. Sure, the quick way was quick, but it would take him directly through Dago turf, where he would be interminably delayed. The thick envelope that he accepted just yesterday from that Ivan bitch to keep his men off the Italian-run streets for the night guaranteed that a broken world of ripped up bodies and exploded cars waited for him down the normal route. Apparently, Miss Balalaika had grown weary of street skirmishes and opted for more direct measures. He could say this about the Russians: they were effective as hell but never subtle. He had spent the better part of the night fretting over their overblown use of force. Were the gunships necessary, really? He had no end of trouble with the national army every time Hotel Moscow went all Afghanistan in his city limits, and the cost of a buying off a general left precious little for the local talent like him.

He _had_ talent, too, damn them all. Did those fucking gang bangers think that what he did was easy? Or cheap? He had a city full of panic-prone civilians to assuage, a federal force to cock-block every time they got a whiff of a big deal gone bad, and four kinds of local media to suppress. He was a goddamn genius, and at the end of it all, his cut from those fat envelopes covered little more than an annual membership at the golf club and his bitch ex-wife's alimony.

He slammed the door to his assigned locker with a dramatic huff even though no one was present in the club's posh ready room to witness his fit. Perhaps he did it _because _no one would see. Thinking back, he couldn't remember anything from the ride over to the links. All this anger couldn't be good for his blood pressure.

He sighed again.

Maybe he should give up and let the regional office replace him like they had been itching to do for years now. He could cash in his pension and spend the rest of his days on a quiet _ko_ in the arms of a gal with more tits than brains. Thoughts of string bikinis filled his simple brain as he hefted the bag of polished clubs over one shoulder and turned towards the brightly lit archway that emptied onto the course.

A swirl of black fabric materialized in front of him, effectively blocking his exit.

"What the-?" he muttered through curled lips.

The stranger tapped a finger to the bridge of his oddly shaped sunglasses. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am-"

But Watsup, chief of Roanapur's crooked police force, heard nothing more of the stranger's speech over the sudden thrum of blood in his ears. There was the glint of gun metal the stranger's hands, and the distinct smell of blood in his long, black jacket. As he turned to run, his cleated golf shoes digging ragged holes in the carpet, Watsup realized that he was already dead. One exit blocked by the one attacker, and he had left his weapon in the car. He hadn't thought that he would need it. Who in Roanapur would want him dead? Didn't they understand how lucky they were to have him?

A strange laughter welled up inside of him as he scrambled to find some way, any way, to escape.

_Only a damn fool_...

He felt the bullets- one, two, three- rip through his back and rattle around between his ribs.

His last laugh broke free on a bubble of blood.

* * *

From the other side of sleep, he heard a series of shots outside. These shots were nothing out of the ordinary, not like the roar of helicopters and the building-shaking explosions from last night. It was just the muffled echo of another .45 from some distance away, but the resounding echo of those booming retorts sounded just like the rush of a massive wave. It brought Rock, gasping and groggy, up on his hands in the bed that still smelled like the curve of Revy's shoulder. The clock on the microwave across the room flashed 05:57, and the envelope on the counter was long gone. Rock didn't know if that made him felt better or worse.

He tried not to think about it too much. He rubbed at his eyes, got up, and stumbled into the washroom.

So what if he hadn't felt her leave? Perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing. The way his fingers lingered over every livid bruise in the shower told him that he might not have been able to let her walk away this time. That selfish, needy core of him wanted to seize her by the wrists, and when he had all of Revy's searing focus fixed on him, it would compel him say those crystalline words that he knew would make her stay. Rock couldn't deny that some central part of him wanted nothing as much as to drown with her, the very woman that he was dying to save.

What excuse could he offer for the greed of his heart? Lovesick men have never been renowned for their logical thinking.

After the shower, he scraped a razor over his face more out of perfunction than necessity. He combed his hair and brushed his teeth. He dug out a clean outfit from Revy's massive pile and ironed out his collared shirt and black slacks by the bed before putting them on. He gathered the strewn papers into the leather satchel. As a final gesture, he emptied the trash and carefully held the bag away from his pants leg as he tugged open the door.

Before he left, Rock took one last survey of the room. Bare walls. Huge mess on the floor. Nothing personal. Nothing that would betray that he was ever there. When Rock thought about it, he realized that he had been living with the substance of a ghost. His former Japanese bosses had wiped out his identity when they threw him away. Roanapur knew him by a different name, but he held no rosy illusions about the value of his new existence. If a stray bullet took his life as he stood there (so pathetic and so small), his city would forget him in hours. Maybe three people could be bothered to miss him, not counting the legion of loan sharks and small-time hustlers with whom Rock had recently become acquainted, but even those petty crooks would not risk uttering his name to curse him. No one in the dirty, jeweled city spoke of the dead if they could avoid it.

As he hung on the door, Rock felt the pull of nothingness sucking at the last flame of his tiny life. He had never felt so near to losing himself, had never stepped toward the abyss so willing. He wondered if he would somehow get used to it.

Rock closed the door without touching the lock.

Over in the Lagoon office, he started the first pot of coffee and flipped through the latest batch of files from Benny's late shift. A note paper-clipped to several pages of photocopied from an American _Lonely Planet_ guide rested on the top of the stack.

Rock gulped down the first slug of bitter coffee and squinted to make out Benny's scrawl.

_I thought that I was the brains in this operation. Sheesh. You were right. This place just might be next stop on the Banana Pancake Trail. More after I sleep... -B_

Rock found himself smiling despite his weariness. Benny was a good friend.

He worked quickly after that: scanning the attached pages, making some notes just to occupy his hands but committing the relevant bits to memory, blazing through the rest of the stack. His impressive pace had another advantage; any pause in the machinations of his mind brought up the intoxicating memory of Revy's raw heat and unrepentant need. The worst of him holed itself up in a corner of his head to scheme of the fastest way to get close enough to touch her again, and it refused to miss any chance to shove his lust to the forefront of his thoughts.

Dutch appeared sometime after nine with a newspaper tucked under one arm and a half-filled duffel bag of raw data, which he dropped on Benny's swivel chair.

"That's the last of it. The bus of snap-happy kiddies is on the bumpy road to Oz by now," Dutch reported as he helped himself to an extra-large mug of coffee and several spoonfuls of sugar.

"You think that getting them out is a waste," Rock observed with a tinge of bitterness.

Dutch fell into a chair and kicked his boots up on the table. "Never said that, but yeah, I do."

Rock didn't look up from yesterday's released report on Thailand's GDP to explain. "This isn't sympathy. This is eliminating a liability, and shipping them to the next city is cheaper than killing them."

"They'll be back sooner or later." He shrugged while Rock marveled at his former boss's perfect poker face. Dutch had mastered the mask of bland indifference.

Rock closed his eyes. "If that happens, I'll figure out something else."

Benny's CPU fans whirled while the latest batch of data uploaded. Rock heard Dutch blow across the surface of his coffee and suck back another swallow. It was amazing how much silence could feel like an interrogation. Dutch had that odd power about him.

Rock opened his eyes. "Listen, I know that you're worried, but I can do this. I'll do whatever it takes."

Dutch raised the mug to his mouth. "Never said you couldn't."

"Watsup is dead," Rock said flatly.

Dutch rocked backwards in his chair. His expression held constant. "When?"

"This morning."

"It's not enough," Dutch said, totally cool. "Watsup was the easy part."

"I know," Rock confirmed with a voice far surer than he felt. "I'll do it."

He felt Dutch's gaze move across his bare arms and sweep over his throat where Revy had left her mark inked in blood under his skin. If there was any doubt about his resolution, Dutch could see the reason for Rock's commitment to the plan plainly in the hard light of morning. Rock was in love- possibly with disaster itself, possibly with the woman who embodied its elemental fury.

Dutch pushed out a long breath, unfolded the newspaper, and pushed it across the table. Rock spun it around to read the front page.

"The headline's about the dangers of rip tides in the harbor. Gunships all over the city last night. Ronny holed up with what's left of his Italian boys somewhere while Hotel Moscow is on the hunt for their blood. The Cartel in smoky ruins thanks to the 14K, and we get rip tides. Un-fucking-believable."

Rock nodded slowly. "Tomorrow will be different."

"What?" Dutch's face cracked into a smile at last as realization hit him. "Damn. Watsup _will_ be tomorrow's lead story because he's not among the paying living to bribe down the paper's editor-in-chief. Don't I feel stupid."

"Maybe Watsup," Rock agreed softly. "Or maybe this."

Dutch accepted the thin stack of papers topped with a trio of Polaroids. He cocked an eyebrow at his former employee. "I hate repeating myself, but are you sure you can do this?"

Rock didn't respond. He merely pushed out of his chair to wash his emptied mug in the sink. He didn't want to talk anymore, but Dutch's rich voice caught him at the door.

"Revy gave me a ride back last night. She looked like shit," he said.

Rock nodded. He knew exactly what Dutch meant. Revy had gone too skinny and too feral. Her clothes hid the worst of it, but Rock had peeked beyond her everyday disguises. The sharp angles of her bones under that sallow skin hurt his heart. Anyone could see that she was pushing too hard. She needed a week's worth of late nights down at the Yellow Flag and too-warm afternoons hanging with Eda. Needed a marathon of old Westerns on the TV and someone to put a dozen or so hot meals in front of her. Needed to laugh. Needed to sleep. Needed to come home.

"She took the money, Dutch," he found himself saying.

"Doesn't mean that she'll leave," Dutch countered in a low voice. "Who's to say she won't put it up her nose?"

It was the same argument starting to swirl again. His faith in Revy versus Dutch's hard-won practicality. Rock opted not to stick around to have it out again. He ducked out of the door into the heavy humidity of an August morning. He had to work.

At the bottom of the stairs, the flash of a camera dazzled his irises.

"Ouch," Rock whined.

"Wimp," Eda chided. She stepped out of the shadow of the building dressed in her typical, lurid, bubblegum pinks. A Polaroid camera dangled from her wrist.

"Oh," Rock said.

"_Oh_?" Eda mocked. "Yeah, you know who I am. Former CIA, motherfucker. Did ya really think I wouldn't figure it out?"

"Eda, I'm busy," Rock insisted. It was a bad excuse. He usually did much better than that. Dutch's quiet interrogation must have done a number on his head. Rock pulled an innocent face and blinked several times to buy time.

Eda whacked him in the shoulder with the camera. "Knock it off. I'm done with your nice guy act. You're gearing up to blackmail the entire city. With your own little army of street kids." She waved a developing Polaroid picture in his face. "Heard you shipped the brats over to Muang Chumphon. I'm thinking that you're going make the move now."

Rock didn't try to hide his frown. "Are you planning on getting in the way?"

Eda snorted. "Did you hear those damn choppers last night? You think I wanna live in a fucking DMZ?"

"Look, pardon my rudeness, but I am working. Just tell me why you're here," Rock cut her off. He tried to walk quickly across the handful of blocks to the main road where he could catch a tuk-tuk to the city center, but Eda tailed him like a soi dog.

"_Ooo_, touchy. Where's that smooth negotiator now? Or maybe you can't be bothered to be polite because you don't see the point of gaining the good Church's support," she teased.

Rock wanted to stop but opted to keep his pace steady. "I find it hard to believe that Yolanda sent you. If she wanted an alliance, she would come herself."

Eda raised the camera to her eye, snapped another shot, and smirked. "You're so cute when you're trying to act tough. But seriously? Think about it, ace. The Church is on the other side of Italian turf, which I can say first-hand is rip-rip torn right now. Fry Face went nine kinds of crazy on those skeezers. I barely got through on my bike. No car could make it, and Yolanda is old as fuck. It's not like she can hoof it here."

"She wants me to come to her," Rock realized.

Eda popped her gum and grinned. "Now you got it. And it gets better. Guess who else is coming to tea time? Only a couple of recently humiliated gang bosses who are sucking down their pride to have a shot at staying in Roanapur."

They rounded the corner, and there was Eda's motorcycle, right on cue. Rock stopped, but Eda sauntered right up to her favorite machine and snagged the helmet from the seat.

"I'll let you wear it, if it'll make ya feel safe," she said with a saucy wink. "You gotta ride bitch, though."

"Eda, what does the Church believe that it will get out of this? You have no reason to play the game. The Church's ties go so deep that it will go on, regardless of what happens to the rest of the city."

Eda's furnace-blast smile closed up and became a hard line even as her blue eyes softened. Rock had seen this before. Behind the bravado and the swagger, there was a woman betrayed and busted up, whose eyes lived in a web of fine lines that belonged on the face of someone twice her age.

"Rock," she said, her voice low and smooth like the current of a river. "You should see what Hotel Moscow has done to this place already. If they are allowed to go on, there will be nothing left to save. Roanapur's the last stop for losers like us. You should know that as well as any of us. The Church will go on, but where else are we gonna go?"

Rock reached out and touched her elbow. If Eda could drop her guard like this, then he would put his trust in her. Revy wasn't the only one with instincts. "I know. You're right. But Yolanda won't like my terms. I need time to prepare for this meeting."

Eda shook her head. "Rock, cutie, we're out of time, and everybody knows it but that insane-o Ivan bitch's crew and the motherfuckin' legion of the Heavenly King." She tossed the shining black helmet to him. "Just get on the bike. This doesn't have to be so hard."

But it was hard. The talks lasted all morning, all afternoon, and into the night. For leaders with only a fingertip's hold on their former place in the city, Abrego and Ronny acted like kings. Both of them suffered from the same malady: a terminal case of machismo. Even as their respective handfuls of good men pissed away the day playing cards and watching pornos with Rico in the adjoining building, the once-mighty crime lords still postured like they controlled platoons of able bodies. Their infinite need to feed their egos started to raise the hackles on Yolanda, who could be downright dangerous when properly primed, and Rock had to fight to keep them all at the table.

Rock couldn't understand why they felt the need to be so damn prideful when they had so little left to call their own. After a few hours, he figured out that they were playing it up for an audience. He felt so stupid. Of course, they had been putting on a show from the beginning. He made everyone kick out their bodyguards. Eda winked at him and licked her lips as she sashayed out of the room.

Once divested of the unnecessary company, Rock could move the players into more favorable positions. The negotiations chugged along smoothly after that, but the whole thing took much longer than Rock had expected.

By the time that Eda dropped him back at the Lagoon's office, darkness had long since taken out the day. She had been right to push him into action that morning. The unearthly stillness that smothered the entire city confirmed that Yolanda's impromptu convention clocked in just before the final squall. They hadn't seen a single sorry soul on the streets during the long ride over.

"Thanks, Eda," he told her sincerely as he handed back the helmet.

"See ya, space cowboy," she grinned at him before shoving it down over her cornsilk ponytail, gunning her bike, and tearing off into the night.

Rock took the long climb up the stairs at the top of which a lewd stream of cursing met him at the door.

"God-fucking-dammit. Just work, you filthy piece of mechanical shit!" Benny swore at his LCD array of monitors.

Rock shot a questioning look to Dutch, who merely shrugged and stood up to refill his highball with bourbon. Rock felt a tidal wave of nausea when he saw the slightest of staggers in Dutch's steps. Dutch never showed the effects of drink. The warm fuzzies wrought from all the day's progress with the minor lords washed away like dust in the rain.

"Guys?" Rock asked.

"Oh. Hey, Rock. We're fucked," Benny declared.

"What? We were fine this morning. What happened?"

"Power outage at the service center. No one there will answer the phone. I can't tell if shit burned to the ground or if a storm knocked down a line or if aliens beamed the whole thing to Vega," Benny explained. "So we're fucked for now, and I can't tell how badly or how permanently."

"Rock, you had visitors," Dutch announced too loudly.

Benny winced. "Yeah, a regular loan shark feeding frenzy. I didn't catch all of it because I was busy romancing a dedicated connection to fix this mess. Dutch handled it."

Dutch gulped back his bourbon and said, "You have another week."

"That wasn't the deal!" Rock panicked. "I need more time."

Benny put a hand on his shoulder. "Easy there, champ. I think Dutch threw in his own stash to buy back that much. Those guys were serious. They wanted their pound of flesh."

Rock made himself breathe even though it felt like he was going under. He needed control. "I know. Thank you. I'm sorry that I wasn't here to handle it myself. But it's been a good day. I have buy-in from the Church, the Colombians, and the Italians. That is what I spent all day doing. Despite what it may look like, we are ahead of schedule."

Rock looked meaningfully at his friends. Benny's shoulders had come down out of their nervous hunch, but Dutch remained impassive on the couch.

"Rock, it's not over," his one-time boss said. The faintest slur colored his words, and Rock hated himself. He should have been more careful with his friends. In the frantic dash to get to this moment, Rock had used up all of Dutch's cool patience and exploited his carefully nurtured network. If Rock's plan failed, then Dutch was sunk. Benny, too. It was a wonder that both of them had continued to function under the strain for so long.

"I'm seeing this through," Rock promised. "Benny, just keep working on the server. If you can't bring it back, we probably have enough to pull from the hard drives to make a good show. I need to change, and then I'll do it." He looked to Dutch. "I'm going to make this happen."

"That reminds me," Benny chimed in. He plucked a small, lumpy fabric bag from his desk. "Rotton dropped this by. He said to thank you for the gig."

Rock accepted the parcel. It felt as heavy as an anchor and as cold as the bottom of the sea.

"I need to get going," he said and fled back to the tiny apartment. He couldn't hide the way that his hands were shaking, even though he wrapped them around the bag's rim until the knuckles turned white.

* * *

Only one thought bubbled to the surface of Johann Fischer's rum-filled mind: his ex-girlfriend Mandy was a filthy Aussie cunt.

Sure, she said that she loved adventure. She claimed that she wanted to see the world and didn't mind burning through all the savings she had put together from her waitress tips, but then what happened? She ditched him in Bangkok, that's what. She took the good backpack, the non-leaky canteen, and all of his cash and took off in the night.

She didn't even say good-bye, just left a note.

_Dear J-_

_I think I have Dengue Fever, again. I'm going home. You really should bathe more_.

That slag.

Some of the guys were headed deeper into the country, so Johann decided to leave Bangkok, which was a little pricey even for Thailand and definitely too rich for his now paper-thin wallet, with them. They said that they were going to Roanapur because no one went to Roanapur, for some reason. Pure country. No tourist traps and an international hostel all the same. It sounded like the wet dream of every hardcore traveller on the Banana Pancake Trail through Asia.

And Roanapur really was far, far out. He had been in the city for over a week and drunk for all but few hours of that time because it was all too surreal for sobriety. People walked around like gunslingers in the Wild West. Shots rang out at every hour. He and a couple of Kiwis had spent the night on the roof of the hostel watching the war unfold in the city below. Those tangerine explosions were so pretty reflected in the clear waters of the harbor. He drunkenly wished that he could turn that Buddha statue around to see the show.

"I can't fucking believe it!" he said over and over.

Then, everything shifted. The Kiwis were gone when he got up some time in the next afternoon. The Maple Leaves and the Brits had packed it up, too. Even the street kids who used to hang around like a pack of mutts by the front door with their Polaroid cameras had just vanished. Worse still, nothing was open in town. No tuk-tuks passed by to pick him up. Even if he wanted to leave, he was stuck.

Johann found a mostly full bottle of Bacardi in one of the emptied rooms and measured the hours in his progress toward the bottom.

Sometime after dark, the gunfights kicked into gear in the city again. He tried to watch from the roof, but it was too creepy to do it alone. Instead, he bought a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine and smoked them down, one after the other, in the hostel's dingy common room.

The front door chimed. Johann dropped his tenth cigarette into his lap at the sound and hopped up. The still-burning smoke tumbled to the floor.

"Fuck!" he cursed in German.

"Are you okay?" the new guy asked. His German sounded like he was speaking through a turbine, but Johann grinned all the same.

"Yeah, it's cool. I just dropped my cig. You might as well come in. The people who work here left when the shooting started."

"Ah," said the new guy.

Johann liked him right away. He had a kind face and bright eyes. Just some light-skinned Asian kid- or was he older? Johann couldn't tell. Asians always looked younger to him.

"I'm Johann. You want a smoke?"

"Yeah," the Asian guy said.

Johann nodded. He decided that the new guy looked too fair to be Thai. "Gimme a sec. I'll get you one."

The next couple of shots sounded much louder and much closer. Johann jumped and then started laughing. What else can you do with that much nervous energy and alcohol in your blood stream?

And then he saw the actual blood. He had leaned down to pick the pack up from the side table by the ratty hostel couch, and there was a growing puddle of blood on the floor under his feet. Where had it come from?

Johann tried to laugh again and couldn't.

He turned to his new friend, a question pushing at the corners of his mouth.

The man lowered the gun. For a long moment, he looked right into Johann's eyes.

"It's the only way," he said simply in English.

Johann lost his balance and crashed into the linoleum. Lying there in that shallow ocean of his own blood, he could see the stranger turn and run, leaving him alone on the floor.

He couldn't pull in any air to yell. Even if he could, no one was there to hear him, so Johann did nothing but think about how odd it was. He could feel the dry tip of his nose and taste the air on his tongue, but he felt exactly like he was drowning.

* * *

_**A/N: **__Thanks for all the reviews and fav-adds. All forms of encouragement are treasured, especially now. I'm not doing so well, as is evident by my incredibly disappointing update schedule. All appropriate measures are being taken trying to maintain the quality of this story, even though my biggest priority these days is making it through work without puking in public. Please be patient with me. I will finish._


	11. Silences

**2100**

The gunfire in the streets is frequent and irregular. It sounds to him like the massive heart of the dying city trying to find its pulse.

There is nothing that Rotton can do now. He played his part and collected his fee. If he was smart, he would be miles from here...

Instead, Rotton watches the lipstick trace and retrace the lines of her mouth. Sawyer's warm weight across his lap confines him to the corner of the couch, and he wishes that he had a method to pull her down with them. His mouth keeps falling open, but no smooth words emerge.

_They should be miles from here_...

Shenhua leans into the mirror until her reflection kisses her back and then smiles with teeth that shine like daggers between those red, red lips.

By the stars, she is beautiful.

Sawyer murmurs in her sleep and collects her thin limbs into a smaller, sadder heap. Her sleeping face frowns into the folds of his dark slacks. Rotton touches her shoulder and lets his hand linger on her warm skin.

"She's exhausted," he observes.

Shenhua bounces a withering glance back at him through the mirror. "How smart of you to notice. That obvious, dummy. She work too hard. Little girl need someone make her stop once in while."

"It looks like she burned herself with the acid again," Rotton notes while his fingers worry the raw skin of Sawyer's ghost-pale wrist. The best cleaner in the city keeps a vat of particularly nasty stuff in her warehouse and feds it with fistfuls of teeth and fingertips. He has seen that sweet smile of hers while it lapped up the offerings and burbled for more.

"She so stupid. No sleep make her clumsy. Stupid clumsy," Shenhua scoffs. She works the braces of the throwing knives fashioned into garters up the smooth expanse of one thigh, then the other.

The rumble of military grade vehicles from the streets below their window accelerates her usual lethargic pace. Rotton understands the need for haste, but he misses the customary languid motion of her preparations. She is even more tantalizing when she takes her time.

But there isn't any time.

The pager tossed without regard onto the couch flashes strings of numbers that make no sense. The Triad alert system has been compromised, but Shenhua does not need a summons to see the call for her services. The Russians welcomed the night by blowing all the transformers in the area. The firefight started soon after. It is nothing like last night's decimation of the Italians with the stop and start of kicked down doors and sudden bursts of bullets. This is a siege. The roar of gunfire has the hungry rhythm of a forest fire. It makes their tiny array of candles flicker and sputter like slaves before an angry master. The uncertain light makes the patterns of her cheongsam waltz along the silken fabric.

Her hands work to bind back her hair before letting the mass of darkness float down to her back. Rotton looks away, down at the rumbled mess of uneven curls on Sawyer's sweet head. Her tiny hand fists into the flounces of her skirt. His own, much larger one tightens around her arm while Shenhua's heels on the hardwood announce that she is leaving.

She pauses at the door to crinkle her nose and stick out her tongue. "Bye bye, silly Wizard. Tell little girl good-bye."

Rotton nods because his voice has failed him one last time. The door swings shut. The candlelight dances on without her.

When he looks down, he sees Sawyer's blue eyes blink- once, twice. She doesn't depend on words, and in that moment, neither does he. She exhales as the weight of his kiss settles into the madness of her hair.

**2200**

Going back to her apartment was a mistake. He can't think of her without feeling sick. Revy and her custom Berettas. Two Hands with that broken smile and oceans of red on the floor.

Rock should have borrowed Dutch's shower or Benny's, but he could not bear to ask them for one more thing, not tonight. He leaves Benny to pack his bags and Dutch with a strong mug of coffee. He slips away to wash off the swamps of cold sweat under his arms and at his groin, so he will be ready for the final act. Rock's night is far from over.

The door is already opened when he goes around back. Of course, someone has been through the unlocked apartment since he left that morning. Even though wasn't much to take since he moved Revy's arsenal to the Lagoon office, the thief pilfered a fair bit of clothing and the beer from the fridge. Oddly, the furniture, including Revy's mattress with the sheets still tangled up from their last tryst, remains.

Rock wants to lie down and remember the heat of her, but Revy's scent make his guts churn.

How does she can do it? The pointing and the pulling? How can she do it and _smile_?

Rock stretches up to turn on the air conditioner. He hangs the garment bag over the bathroom door and puts the box containing his custom-made cuff links on the counter. He sheds the clothes that he wore all the long day onto the floor.

The water beats against the tile, and although he knows that the world is full of sound, the white noise from the shower and the air compressor fill his head with such astounding silence. Rock lets the water hit him as he tries and tries again to take up the full weight of who he has become.

**2300**

Tommy Gui has his ambitions, sure. He wants to move up the chain, wants Boss Chang's seat one day, wants a firecracker of a girl who could keep up with him in all the ways that matter. Hell, he wants to see tomorrow. That's the apex of ambition when you are facing down the best of Hotel Moscow.

The Russians move like an army in the streets before him because they _are_ an army, and although he knows that- has always known that- the difference between knowing and seeing is enough to make him forget all of his ambitions until only the instinct that has carried him this far through his dark life is left.

Even though his mind has emptied to make room for all those split-second judgment calls of a combat scenario, Tommy is careful to stick with Boss Chang's plan. He moves in the prescribed pattern. He keeps out of the range of the snipers. He fires at heads because their body armor nearly negates any hit to the chest. He keeps count of his kills to compare with Two Hands later. It's just like that crazy bitch to get her kicks out of a blood contest. He agrees because something is just broken enough inside of his head to think that it sounds like a good time, too. She never mentioned a prize, but if he wins, he plans to claim her.

His mind dwells for a second too long on the pleasures of taking Two Hands.

Tommy Gui thinks of nothing in particular as he falls. He feels the overwhelming rush of the whole world and then all of that supreme stillness in the span of a moment.

The Ivan sniper had been tracking him for some time, waiting for the inevitable misstep in the wrong direction.

**2400**

Balalaika sees one of the Triad elite go down, and she looks backwards to share her smile with him. Her heart stops yet again when she can't find his face. Boris isn't there. She keeps forgetting. The remembering hurts every time, and yet she can't make herself accept that he is gone. She will keep searching through the smoke. It feels less like betrayal this way.

The front line breaks through another one of Chang's impromptu blockades. Her point force moves to the claim the ground while the 14K fades back to the next stop marker. Balalaika sets her jaw, shoulders her weapons, and follows.

She thought that she could finish Chang quickly by attacking right away. He stayed up all night taking care of the Colombians while Hotel Moscow chased down the Italians. She bet that he would take a day to recover, so she pushed her men to move against him without giving them a reprieve in between battles. She banked on his laziness and failed to admit that Chang posessed the power to get into her head. He foresaw her move and made preparations. He blocked the best routes into his territory with mountains of refuse. He used the advantages of the 14K's numbers to draw out Hotel Moscow along lengthy avenues. He didn't build a fort like a fool because he know that she would streamroll any defense he could erect. Instead of depending on a singular line of defense, the Triads use makeshift barriers. When she overwhelms one, they simply fall back to the next, and she loses men at every stop point. He knew that she would charge, and because he knows her, tonight will be darker and bloodier than she dares to dread. Very few of them will see tomorrow.

Balalaika feels her face crack into a thin smile. All these years of chasing an impossible glory war in the crime world, and Chang is the bastard who gives it to her. She doesn't know if the hard, twisting ache under her breastbone is growing love or boiling rage.

It may also be simple self-loathing. This is more her fault than Chang's brilliance. In Afghanistan, they used to fight for days on end. Those sun-baked days don't feel that long ago in her mind, so she made her plans as though they were just yesterday. In reality, she hasn't touched the desert in over a decade ago- another truth that she can't seem to make herself remember. She feels the weight of those years in her bones and sees the toil of time in limbs of her men.

She has counted on her strength, her men, and their experience, but time flies. Her body and mind feel so slow. Every time she looks up, there is another face missing in the ranks, and the 14K seems endless in number with their clown bag of cheap tricks. Smoke grenades and flash-bangs and dirty bombs rolled out in trash cans.

Looming in the distance, Chang's high-rise glows. It must be on an independent power grid from the rest of the Triad area. Although she tastes dread and blood mixed on her tongue, the light calls to Balalaika, and she does not know fear. She won't die until she faces him one last time.

**0100**

Bao almost didn't bother to open the bar. He couldn't imagine who would possibly come by for a drink on a night like this, but it is after midnight, nearly every seat is full, and the crowd is wonderfully quiet. He can hear the jukebox music piping Motown all the way across the room from his place behind the counter.

Madame Flora and her girls were among the first to arrive. Flora brought him a box of casings for his shotgun and a plateful of savory crepes. The girls looked so painfully young in their street-clothes that Bao opened his only bottles of champagne for them, and they paid him in kisses. When the other customers started arriving, the girls fell into hostess roles, all smiles and sweet manners. Within an hour, the Yellow Flag was filled to capacity. Bao can't remember a more docile or profitable night.

He looks up from the beer tap to see Flora holding court in the corner. When she pauses, there is laughter. Warm, honey rolls of it that seem to blot out the scream of rockets and explosions in the city.

Two of her girls have appointed themselves as cocktails waitresses, and they make cute displays of surprise when the typically stingy patrons offer up generous tips. The girls slip half of what they are making back to Bao with shy smiles. Madame Flora has trained them to give the house its rightful share, but Bao wouldn't care if they kept the lot of it. He can charge anything that he likes for the drinks, and the people would still pay.

He doesn't, though. After midnight, he started lowering prices and passing out free shots to his regular crowd. It's the end of the world, after all. It feels right to be a little kinder tonight.

**0200**

Eda stands at the open door of her wardrobe and tries to decide. It is technically Church business, so the habit is probably her best bet. Then again, it's a city job, possibly with guns a-blazing, and she moves so much better in her regular clothes.

Really, though? The night is so thick with humidity and heat that she feels like she could reach out her window and wring it like a damp cloth. She would prefer to wear nothing on a night like this. The mere thought of fabric makes her grumpy. Even the towel wrapped around her from the shower feels oppressively warm.

"We're almost ready-" Rico informs her from the hall, but cuts off when he turns into her room and finds her nearly naked. He lets out a cute little yip of surprise.

"Relax," Eda tells him as she turns to the bedroom door with a wicked smile. "I'm not really a Sister. I'm not breaking any vows."

Rico ducks his head to stare at the floor. His face glows from the heat of his blush. "I know, but you're making me want to break mine. You are very beautiful."

Even compliments cost in a place like Roanapur. Eda narrows her eyes and crosses her arms over the seam of the towel. "What do you want?"

Rico sags into the doorframe and offers up a watery grin. "To skip forward in time until it's tomorrow?"

Eda uncrosses her arms and breathes again. Rico is young still; she forgets that too often. Of course, he is scared. Rico hasn't been through the inferno before. Tonight marks his first trip to the edge of the void. What a crazy time to get your big-time combat cherry popped...

She turns to her wardrobe and lets the towel fall. She reaches for the under shift and the black robe and talks while she dresses.

"Listen, Rico. We're just doing back-up tonight. We'll be fine. Worse case scenario? Rock's big idea doesn't pan out, and we watch the city go down. But you and me, baby, we'll walk no matter what. That's our stake in this showdown. We're the survivors. But the best case scenario? We watch a new day coming while this whole ugly city rises up singing."

Rico sighs. "If you say so."

Eda drops the scapular over her head and ties it down with the woolen belt. She can hear the smile in her own voice. "Don't tell me that you're losing faith already, Daddy-o."

"And you haven't?" Rico asks far too seriously.

Eda shrugs and sinks onto the bed to lace up her boots. "I believe when it's too foolish to doubt. Never said that shit is easy, but we got a chance here. A good one. Rock is smart, and he's playing this extra-smart. I'm not going to look for dark clouds while the sun is shining, you know?"

When she reaches for the wimple, Rico's hands close around hers. Eda watches, bemused, while he adorns her palms with sincere, little kisses. She lets him because he is harmless, and the night is heavy with silence. Eda has learned to take scraps of comfort where she can.

"You should wear your hair down," he confesses, a little breathlessly, against her wrist.

Eda cocks an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure you want to deal with the temptation?"

"What can I say?"' Rico teases back. "I like beautiful things."

**0300**

Benny stands in line with the others and watches them to pass the time. He finds that he can look at any of them for as long as he likes because no one will meet his eye. It is so odd. On a usual day in Roanapur, they would be the ones sizing him up and coming to the same ridiculous conclusion. Tall, blonde, Caucasian: must be an Ivan. He had a hell of a time getting dates before Jane came along; the local girls just assumed he was one of Balalaika's warrior monks and wrote him off. He started wearing aloha shirts to differentiate himself from the stoic Ruskie crowd. Never did work, but it wasn't all bad. Street peddlers give him fair prices and correct change. The cops let him speed like a fiend in the Dodge. He really ought to get around to thanking Balalaika and her boys for small favors.

That is, if any of them survive.

Benny turns his attention to the show unfolding at the front counter. A man desperate for a ticket runs through the standard showing of ploys. Asking. Bribing. Threatening. Pleading.

The clerk shakes his head, apologizes, repeats. "There are simply no seats left on this flight, sir. There is nothing I can do."

It's not true.

The pleading man isn't offering enough, so the clerk lacks the proper motivation to bump one of the current passengers from the departure list. Benny knows about how much it took to secure his ticket on the last ride out of Roanapur. No regular Joe could afford that kind of fee for safe passage out of the burning city. The man arguing his case at the counter is nothing more than average, and Benny sees the wealth and power in the brutal creases of slacks and the polish on shoes in the crowd all around him. He feels a little like a joke with his silly shirt and scuffed sneakers, but the ticket is immutable in his hand. For the time being, he is one of them.

The minutes drag on. The surly lot of them lurks near the double, sliding glass doors that separates the tiny waiting area inside the airport from the rain-slick tarmac.

Inside his jacket pocket, Janet's number written on a scrap of paper promises warmth at the end of this very long ride. Benny remembers the scent of her hair and holds onto that happiness as the scream of a turbine engine rattles the building. The silver cigar of a jet plane touches down on the runway and coasts to a controllable speed despite the puddles. No faces darken the line of oval windows. A ghost flight. Who would be stupid enough to come here, now?

With no one to disembark, the few remaining staff at the airport starts the boarding right away.

His bags are heavy with discs and hard drives. Sweat drops congregate in unsavory places as he lugs his things across the pavement to the waiting plane. In comparison to the others, he travels light. The rest of the passengers drag suitcases the size of ponies after them. Benny can tell from their shuttered expressions that no one expects to come back.

He looks over his shoulder toward Roanapur as he climbs the stairs toward the aircraft's hatch, and something like lightning flashes across the sky followed by a distant rumble that isn't thunder. He half-expects to see a mushroom cloud blooming up through the light pollution of the smog-grey sky.

Benny doesn't believe in God these days. He remembers bits of the Torah and the prayers that his mother said, but he's more jew-ish than a true believer. Even so, he says something that might be a prayer because he isn't ready, not really. He does not want to say good-bye to Roanapur, even as she is leaving.

**0400**

The bourbon is a headache behind his eyes, and Dutch rests against the ledge to light his cigarette and wait.

In the streets below, another car blows, and his body jerks with a fear that he can't shake even after all these years. The scent of gasoline poisons the wind that also carries the clean smell of rain through leaves. He hates it all for being so damn familiar. All those gunfights and shitty jobs and lost decades, and here he is, right back in the hot zone. When he closes his aching eyes, he hears the memory of choppers and feels the burn of napalm fumes in his lungs.

He saw a woman in the gutter that morning. He went out to get a stronger brew of coffee and found her curled up next to the storm drain like a roadkill cat. Bullet in her neck and two in her chest. No clean shots, so it sure as hell wasn't planned. She was just there and unlucky. Her features were Thai, so clearly and unmistakably Thai, but Dutch can't shake the feeling that he has seen her before in a drained rice paddy in another country and a half-lifetime ago.

Maybe she is why the bourbon tasted better than usual, so good that he didn't stop even though he meant to.

Dutch exhales, leans back, and looks down.

Ivans move through the street, stealthy and deadly like the special forces they are and he was.

So they are planning to storm the castle, after all. Just like Rock planned. Everything is going just like Rock has said, but Dutch doesn't have faith in illusions like plans. He waits on the rooftop because there is nothing left to do and nowhere else to go. All bets have been placed, and he can't walk away until the final dice rolls. His reputation and most of his money are tied into Rock's insanity, and Dutch can offer no excuse to dull his regret's keen edge. Maybe he developed a terminal case of loneliness in his age. He can't explain why he has let his heart get so attached to a couple of crazy, slant-eyed kids and a cynical hacker.

The gunships kept him awake for too long last night with his memories. He hates being so nostalgic.

The rifle does a slow blink in the passing flare of an explosion.

The dead woman, he wonders to pass the time, who was she?

**0500**

Shin-Shin laughs himself to death. He was laughing when the bullets tore into him, and he keeps making burbling _hyuk hyuk_ noises from the pavement while his legs kick around like the limbs of a brained dog.

Revy doesn't register loss. If she did, she would fear for her life because Shin-Shin was the last of her motley squad, and now it's just her against an angry unit of Balalaika's best.

It doesn't occur to Revy to feel pity. If she did, she would spare a bullet to hurry Shin-Shin's passing, but she lets him twitch while she fires into the blackness and fades down the alley.

A sniper's bullet pings off the metal fire escape over her head.

"Nice work, jackass!" she yells as she runs. She grins while her boots churn through the distance to the next of Chang's resistance points. That fucking sniper has been gunning for her all night, and the frustration of all those misses must be making him crap himself with shame. She can't wait to track him down and drill a third eye socket into his forehead.

She leaps over the barrier of reinforce cars and steel drums just in time to see the Russians flood the alley behind her.

Someone fires an RPG, and the explosion cooks her eyes for a heavy minute. Everything goes to perfect white and absolute silence.

When the color of life returns, she looks for Tommy Gui, so she can brag. Seven of the vodka boys, motherfucker. Beat that. But Tommy isn't there, and Revy knows that means he is dead. She doesn't feel one way or the other about it.

The Russians swarm forward, and the lot of the back-and-whites make a messy break for it.

Revy moves.

She doesn't think because thinking will get you killed.

The Triad nobodies turn around and run while the Russians bear down on them. Revy never liked the idea of dying with a bullet in her back, so she ducks into a car and kicks out the side window. Without risking too much, she picks off a couple guys. No kills, damn that body armor, but she slows them.

"Fuck!" she hisses as the sniper's rounds punch miniature skylights in the roof of the car. In sheer frustration, she fires back a few of her own.

She moves.

The Russians don't dare surround her. They know that she would use their bullets against each other. Five of them with assault rifles herd her toward the wall. She won't go that quietly. Revy turns and races to the brick. Her boots take what traction they can steal from the wall to carry her upward. Her legs push her up and away. Revy fires as she backflips, aiming for eyes and hands.

When she lands, three of them are down, but the other two have her. She aims both guns at the closest guy and fires until the clips are empty, which takes all of three shots total.

Even without her guns, she moves.

The last guy tries to get a bead on her, but those rifles aren't fun to aim in close range with a fast moving target. Revy ducks in to kick him in the groin, body shielding be damned, because she can't think of another thing to do. Before she can get her foot off the ground, the guy wises up and reaches for his side arm. She dodges, barely. A shot echoes. The guy goes down.

Revy grins to the rooftops. "Nice move, team-killer!" she hollers at the sniper. The bullets pound the ground around her like hail.

Revy laughs as she moves fast to avoid the metal rain.

She moves and moves with nothing at all in her mind.

**0600**

Chang waits for her. The Tower blazes, but his office is dark. Chang sits behind his desk, so she will know just how to find him. Because she will find him. She wants him, only him. Who cares that she is going to kill him or be killed by him? She wants him, and Chang has never felt so fucking _honored_.

He tells himself that he will save himself for her, that he will go against her cold— no warm-up— because he wants to return the favor of honor, but it's bullshit. When she comes, she will be worn through from two full nights of exhausting battle, and he will be fresh. There's an advantage in his waiting, even though he is too much of a coward to admit it. The bit about saving himself for her sounds so much more noble...

The door opens. It can't be her because no bullets announce the arrival.

Chang squints through the murky dark and sighs. "Oh, it's you. Didn't I tell you that I would shoot you in the face if you came back here?"

"You did," Rock answers simply. He shifts the briefcase from one hand to the other. "You know why I am here."

The guards had strict orders not to let anyone through, and there is no way that a simple Japanese business man could have blustered his way through a wall of Triad thugs.

The man standing before Chang wears a fine new suit and blinks back at him with the eyes of villain.

"So I'm betting that you have a compelling reason why I shouldn't put a bullet in each of your lungs," Chang says with a shake of his head.

"I have a proposition for you, Mr. Chang," Rock replies.

"What makes you think I'm that kind of guy?" Chang jokes.

Rock smiles with all the warmth of a glacier. "You would be wise to listen."

"What makes you think that I'm wise?" Chang asks, but the joke is flat.

Rock's smile stays fixed, and when he moves toward Chang's desk, he moves with the fearless gait of a victor.


	12. Jolly Roger

The curve of Rock's shoulder offered no trace of softness, and the room felt too hot. Had he turned off the A/C again? That shit. Even so, Revy had no desire to get up, not yet. Sleep, even sleep in a too-humid room and sitting up, was still sleep. Rock should just shut his trap and let her rest, but no, he had to keep running away at the mouth, telling her to get up. And he kept calling her by the wrong name. Two Hands.

"Two Hands? Wake up, Two Hands."

Revy cracked an eye, and her half-dreams fell away although her exhaustion remained. A Triad kid had his soft, little hand raised to touch her shoulder. Paint chips from the metal drum clung to the side of her face when she moved to smack away his insolent gesture.

"They here yet?" she rasped.

The Triad kid shook his head and passed over the water canteen. He had been with her for more than an hour as the 14K skirmished, lost, retreated to the next blockage, and regrouped against Balalaika's Black Guard. In the early hours of the night, they would have been overrun by now, but the Russians' movements had slowed. Some of the guys saw it as a victory, but Revy wasn't that dumb. The Russians didn't need to hurry anymore. Chang's tower, that pale, luminary watchman of the night, was only a few blocks away now.

The 14K was losing, Revy reflected as she took a swig of warmish water and swallowed down the bitter tang that the brief nap had left between her teeth. More flecks of paint clung to her black clothes when she respositioned from sitting with her back against the concrete-filled barrel to crouching. She took a look down the street through a crack between the barrels.

"I can feel them coming," the kid whispered.

"Got that right, Sad Eyes," Revy said flatly.

Sad Eyes. Where the hell did that come from? That name went extinct in the really ancient past. Like New York past. She must be getting old. Perhaps old wasn't the right word, but it was the only one that her exhausted brain could produce at that moment. Her knees ached, her shoulders throbbed, her insides felt like bags of chum, and she dreaded taking off her boots to witness the carnage of her feet. Body turned traitor- that was being old, alright.

The Cutlass Specials clung to her back like broken wings. She had burned through her high-round magazines hours before, but she wouldn't toss them. Stopping to reload translated to certain death, so she kept moving and living. Guns could be procured from the corpses or from the stashes planted at Chang's pre-planned barricades. A solid Colt .45 classic from some dead Triad loser. A short M5. A pair of .22s (what a joke) from one of Chang's Blue Lantern fanboys. Of course, she preferred her own guns, but Revy wasn't picky. If it could shoot, she liked it enough.

She stole another glance over the rim of the barrel line, and sure enough, the shadows were coming. Revy gulped the rest of the water with one hand and aimed for the eyes of the advancing Russian force with the other. The .22s did next to nothing against body armor. She needed that skill shot to make any ounce of difference.

She fired without pleasure. The thrill of fighting had given way to fits of impatience about four hours ago when Revy had poured rounds down near-empty streets in childish outrage. She loved a fight, but this was a long-ass battle. The Russians stayed calm and stayed alive while rows of Triads fell before them. The barricades held for less and less time as the Russians regrouped and countered. Revy used up all her tricks during those long hours. Her arms turned to mush from the constant gun play, and she had to adjust her aim to mitigate how her left elbow kicked out like a spasm and how her right wrist drifted downward. New guys would be waiting to refresh the Triad ranks every couple of blocks, so the battle kept going. She kept going. No other choice, really. Maybe they had always been fighting. Maybe she had finally crossed over. Valhalla and all that shit. She tried to keep from thinking too much, but her brain kept letting these weird thoughts wriggle in.

"C'mon, c'mon," she muttered. Her eyes checked and double-checked the advancing black fleet for the one figure that Revy had been waiting all night to fight, but Balalaika remained hidden. Revy had only caught sight of the golden goddess of war twice: once near the beginning when everything was happening so fast and a second time only in passing, a second's worth of a glance from far away.

The Russians pressed down on them, and some of the new idiots picked up and ran as the first Ivan touched the barricade. Revy fired twice, and the invader dropped his assault rifle, howling in Russian because she had taken off a couple fingers with those shots. Three other Ivans crossed the barrier's line in quick succession. Revy wanted to gum her feet to the pavement and take those bastards down, but she would soon be overwhelmed and alone. She had no choice but to join the retreat yet again with Sad Eyes in tow.

* * *

Chang tasted the mouthful of cigarette smoke twice: once in, once out. He did not look down at the photos fanned out in a mosaic of yellow faces, red splashes, and black suits. The chaotic sound of shots in the street below grew louder as the minutes ticked away. Tonight was his to lose.

"You waiting for a compliment on your detective work?" he said lightly even while his stomach sank like the Cleaner's latest offering to the sea. "Tell me what you want. I'm bored."

Rock smiled. "Our party is incomplete. It would be rude to continue."

Chang directed his gaze to the window. He didn't trust his eyes, not for this. "She will kill you before she listens."

"That won't do, Mr. Chang," Rock replied. The tone rang of warning.

Chang let the smoke cool over his tongue. Sucked it down. Pushed it out. The words slipped out on the tide of an exhale. "It is what it is. That woman is a force of nature."

"You seem to know her quite well."

Chang pulled hard on the cigarette and shook his head. What a rookie mistake. He should feel ashamed for giving himself away.

Rock pressed the advantage. "Surely she can listen to reason. The last five years were build on trust and the love of profit between the two of you. You can see how bringing her to this table would play to your best interests."

"Shut up," Chang snapped, suddenly exhausted by the niceties. "You know what you have, and the polite gentleman act needs some work."

Rock waited while Chang performed a little show of making up his mind for the sake of his ego.

"I do what I can. But you know that she is coming here to kill me. It's a little hard to talk with a bullet in your lung. Trust me on that."

"I'm sorry," Rock said with sincerity.

Chang waved him off. "I need to make some calls. Sit tight and remember that I make no guarantees. Balalaika is like the ocean. You don't tell her what to do, and she will roll you under at her whim. There's only so much that even I can do."

"You sound like a man in love," Rock replied softly.

"You would know, Mr. Two Hands. She's going to love those cufflinks, by the way," Chang said.

Rock stiffened in his chair.

Chang managed a chuckle and reached for the phone.

* * *

Revy grabbed a fistful of Sad Eyes's jacket and flung him behind the final barricade. A thin stream of blood arched out from his shattered thigh and splattered onto the pavement. He didn't cry out when his face collided with the ground. As soon as he hit, his unsteady hands pushed his body back up to a sitting position and then fumbled with his tie to stem the bleeding.

Revy's smile did more for her spent brain and battered body than a half-bottle of yellow pills. He was a good kid, that Sad Eyes. He would probably make it, even with his injury. You can't fake a good survival instinct.

The remaining Triad forces on the streets tumbled in and combined with the fresh forces that Chang had wisely saved for the last stand at the foot of the Tower. This barricade of sand bags and sections from concrete highways dividers formed a semi-circle around the base of the Tower. A couple guys doled out fresh clips from boxes of ammunitions. Revy grabbed two pre-loaded magazines for her guns and two more to attach to the belt at her waist. Water and some kind of nutrition bars made the rounds as well, and in the middle of the sea of black suits, a vision of white patterned silk shimmered like heat rising from a highway under the summer sun.

"About damn time you showed, Chinglish," Revy called out. "Don't worry. I saved a couple of baddies for ya."

Ivan bullets whistled around them. Shenhua pulled a face, red lipstick making the simple frown into high drama, but Revy knew the sour expression had nothing to do with the danger.

"You look shit," Shenhua scolded. "No regular ugly. _Ugly_ ugly."

"Bitch. Nice of you to get your lips off of the cock long enough to help out," Revy shot back.

"Ugly and tacky," Shenhua sniffed.

Revy pointed a gloved finger at the corner of her mouth. "Hey, you got some white stuff right there. You might wanna take care of that."

The gunfire morphed from a gentle shower to an outright downpour. Shenhua ducked down to take cover. Revy felt her creep up alongside while Sad Eyes's newly acquired M5 sent little, hot-metal, love messages into the darkness.

"Where they?" Shenhua asked, the teasing replaced with steely determination.

"Hiding around the corners like damn sneaky cowards. Those Ivans know how to make ya work for the good shot," Revy grimaced. "Patient fuckers, but fast as liquid hell when they wanna be."

A pair of hulking shadows made the dash from the shelter of one brick building to the next. Revy tried for their knees, but her left elbow kept kicking out like a grumpy mule. Her aim sucked, and she hated it.

"Too far," Shenhua hissed.

That was the bitter truth of it. Shenhua was fresh to the battle, but her skills were nigh useless in a long-range battle like this. The Taiwanese blade-slinger would be a fucking godsend when the Ivans decided to storm the castle, which was why Chang had saved her for the last line of defense, but the intensity of the fire fight and the distance to the targets meant that she could do nothing in the meantime. Revy couldn't muster the glee to flaunt her superiority, not when her arms felt as useful as creamed wheat in sausage casings. With so much of the Triad elite decimated or exhausted, they were just streaming lead into the void. The 14K could use a little bit of shine on their side.

"Any sign of the Boss?" Revy asked.

"No. He inside."

Revy gritted her teeth. Boss Chang had made the plan, and they followed it to the letter to lead the Russians to this point. Chang knew that it would be a war of attrition, and the one thing that the Triads had over Hotel Moscow was warm bodies. Frustrate and wear out the smaller force. Revy liked the plan. It had kept her alive so far and she knew that Balalaika had lost a fair amount of men along the way, but it wasn't enough. Balalaika's boys fought like berserkers- the more you killed, the stronger the remaining ones became. It wouldn't stop until every Ivan twitched and jerked into an unwilling surrender to death.

On top of that, Chang never said what they should do once they got to the Tower. Holding the line would only work for so long. That Russian bitch would devise some way to overrun the Tower. Fry Face knew how to adjust. All she needed was time.

Sad Eyes made a little keening noise beside her. Revy followed his gaze up to the roof of the four-story building across the wide boulevard from their make-shift trenches. The barrel of a sniper rifle briefly appeared over the edge before disappearing again.

Revy heaved a sigh. "Again? I thought I'd lost that moron."

Shenhua's eyes narrowed to impossibly thin slits. "Bad wind."

"Yep," Revy agreed flatly. "We're all going down right here."

"Two Hands?" Sad Eyes piped up. He held up his snub M5. The black metal of the gun glistened wetly in the humid night like the blood-dark stain on the leg of his trousers. "What should I do?"

"Oh, cute! Why you no say that you married?" Shenhua teased.

"Shut up," Revy growled. She fixed Sad Eyes in her glare. "Aim for what moves, kid. You'll figure it out."

Sad Eyes blinked and set his jaw.

Revy hated lying to the kid, but she had no other ideas. She could take care of herself, but she couldn't lead an army. Shenhua was the same. They were fighters, not strategists. They needed a leader.

A murmur filtered through the Triad ranks. Revy called over one of the guys that she recognized from the street battle with a jerk of her head.

"What's up?" she demanded.

"Orders from the Boss. We storm them," the guy replied.

"Bullshit."

"Hey, it's orders," the guy said with shrug that failed at being nonchalant. He couldn't hide his excitement. Such faith in leadership. Poor guy couldn't see a suicide mission through his loyalties.

Revy cast a sideways glance at Shenhua, who looked absolutely disgusted.

"You going in?" Revy asked.

"Orders," Shenhua muttered. She glanced up at the Triad Tower. "Maybe he see something we don't?"

"Maybe." Revy held up her Cutlass Specials. The Jolly Roger emblems grinned in the fading moonlight from the ivory hilts. "I cut 'em down. You cut 'em up. Hungry?"

Shenhua's red lips tugged up in a broad grin. She reached out to pat Revy's face. "You no total slut. I starving."

"Don't touch me," Revy warned.

Shenhua giggled.

Revy toed Sad Eyes' good leg with her boot. "Change of plans, kid. Cover us. Got it?"

They waited for the first wave of Triad idiots to spring up from the defenses and sprint towards that Russians before they made their move. Under the protection of the M5's steady stream of bullets, two of Roanapur's deadliest denizens leapt over the stack of sandbags and charged the Russians.

Revy's arms felt stronger, more stable, when her eyes swallowed the light of those beautiful, shining flashes of bone made when Shenhua 's blades opened wide gashes on the heads of their enemies.

* * *

Not for the first time that night, Balalaika hated the pounding of gunfire. She ached for that perfect stillness that meant victory. The ghosts of the men she had lost trailed behind her, a spectral train of souls bound to her by loyalties and promises. Every time she looked over her ranks, there was another face missing. Every time she looked over her shoulder, she felt that preternatural weight grow. One more bloody morning to release them all.

Something that she recognized, dimly, as weariness bit into her heart.

"Kapitan, they are coming," one of her men said, his voice light with wonder.

"No," she said. Surely Chang wasn't such as idiot. Defending his Alamo was the last hope of the Heavenly King. Rushing the enemy meant certain, speedy defeat, but when she looked, she saw Two Hands chewing through the distance with the grace of a deadly acrobat to the fatal rhythm of swinging blades wielded by that Triad lady assassin.

Her breath caught in her chest. The shock must have shown on her scarred face. Her men's sudden burst of confidence flickered. She could taste it in the way they shifted away from her.

"Kapitan?" another of her soldier offered quietly. "Is something wrong?"

Balalaika shook her head. She had witnessed the destructive wonder of these women in the past. The vision that had slipped through her defenses and scissored away the strings of her battle mask lay beyond the merciless beauties dancing for blood in the street. Behind them, Balalaika saw a clear path to Chang's doorstep. The foolishness of the Triad charge made an odd sort of sense, if his will matched her own. She could not refuse his invitation to accelerate the end. They owed each other at least that much.

"Comrades! To victory!" she screamed. Her throaty call echoed into the dark corners, and her men answered. A tide of bodies raced forward and collided with dwindling island of black suits while Balalaika hid the golden sheen of her of hair down the back of the overcoat and slipped away from the fray and towards the Tower.

* * *

The people who swarmed toward her morphed into cammo-clad mannequins with red, red mouths and cruel, twisted faces. Revy let the spent magazines clatter to the pavement, shoved replacements into her guns, and put solid lumps of metal into their hollow bodies. In her mind, their faces cracked like egg shells. Blackness leered at her through the jagged edges of newly broken holes.

The rush of frantic fighting heated her blood. Revy felt her heart tick in time with the bang of guns; her breath whooshed on the backs of Shenhua's blades. Living and dying mattered as much as the dark, half-hidden face of the moon. All that she wanted was to feel this good forever.

At the edge of her vision, she saw a Russian dart past the main mass of combatants and sprint to the glass doors of the Tower. The distance between them meant that Revy couldn't take a good shot, so it couldn't be her problem. She had almost forgotten the rogue Russian until she saw him raise a gun and, through the heat of Sad Eyes's final rounds of ammo, put two bullets into the poor kid's head.

When the Russian's arm raised, a trickle of honey-blonde hair spilled out of the collar, and Revy's systems surged with bloodlust. That Russian was no man, and Revy had longed to go toe-to-toe with Big Sister Balalaika for years and years.

"Where you going, bitch?" Shenhua yelled after her.

Revy didn't waste a bit of breath to shouy any explanations back. She flew after the Russian war goddess with the giddy joy that only the youngest of children can taste in the everyday world. She didn't even notice how the glass doors gave way without a creak of protest even through Revy knew, on some level, the the Tower's security system could bolt down the entry ways with reinforced steel and bullet-proof glass.

Only the emergency overhead panels lit the lobby. Revy sighted the hem of a military overcoat disappear around a corner and took off after it. Her boots thudded against the marble tiles, but she throttled back from top speed. No need for a flat sprint. Revy knew where Balalaika would go.

Revy crashed against the metal bar of the door to the secondary stairwell and took the plain concrete steps up two at a time. Balalaika could pick her off easy in the broad, gently curled sweep of the main staircase, so Revy took a safer route into the upper floors of the Tower. Nothing sucked as much as taking a cheap shot from above and then having your pathetic corpse roll down a long stack of stone-slick steps to end it all as a disgusting pile of flesh at the bottom.

Another door, a quick sprint down the halls, two right turns, and there she was, skulking outside the office door like an overzealous fan. Revy raised her guns and fired but not before Balalaika heard the muted drum of her boots on industrial carpet. The Ivan queen ducked to avoid the shot aimed at the center of her chest and used her bullets to force Revy into a doorway.

"Been waiting for this!" Revy howled.

"Cute," Balalaika smirked.

A breath and then the first step into the whirlwind.

Revy leapt and fired.

Balalaika charged.

Long ago, Chang taught Revy that no one can outrun a bullet. Once the shot is fired, it follows a straight line to its destination. The only way to make sure that its final, leaden resting place isn't a cozy nest in your soft tissue is to be out of that line before the bullet ever leaves the chamber. Don't be where the enemy thinks you should be. Make each movement unpredictable. If you get good enough, you can even opt to stand still on occasion and let the enemy mistakenly fire around you. That always freaks the small timers out.

But Balalaika was not a small timer. She knew every trick that Chang ever imparted, and she had patience, strength, and stature over Revy. Engaging Balalaika in close quarters was like edging too close to the Sun; you weren't making it out alive.

Revy conceded ground doorway by doorway to keep the field of play wide. Using door handles and chair railings as a foot props, she made use of the high ceilings to stay out of Balalaika's line. Usually, the two guns gave Revy an edge because she forced her would-be victims to dance between dual live wires, but Balalaika feared nothing. Every time Revy thought that she could nail the tsaritsa of Hotel Moscow, Balalaika would surge forward and force Revy into a retreat.

"This hall has an ending," Balalaika reminded her. Her icy blue right eye glowed in its web of puckered scar tissue.

"Shit," Revy muttered. She turned and found the crash-bar on the stairwell door and smashed through it, taking the stairs that lead upwards.

It took only a second to realize that Balalaika wasn't following her.

"Shit!" Revy repeated, loud enough to be heard on every floor landing of the stairwell. She yanked open the metal door and sprinted, no holding back, down the hall. The office door at the end of the hall hung by one hinge. Revy took a peek inside the bare office space with its dry musk of disuse to confirm what she already knew.

_Don't be where the enemy thinks you should be._

Chang's office wasn't on the second floor. He only used that space when he dealt with other members of Roanapur's criminal organizations; he dressed up this dingy space and made with the showmanship. His real office was much higher in the building with a nice view of the harbor. He liked that little piece of added security, and now Revy understood why.

Balalaika would be pissed that she had been deceived, and due to idiocy, Revy had let herself be goaded into losing her target. Now, there was one angry Ivan bitch loose in the Tower and Revy only had herself to blame.

She knew what she had to do. Revy kicked at the busted door because she definitely didn't want to do it. "Fuck fuck fuck."

She climbed the eight flights to Boss Chang's true office and burst through the door.

"Heya. So here's the thing-" Revy halted because the man behind the desk has Asian eyes and a good suit, but he wasn't Chang. When she turned to double-check that she had the right door, she met the undivided, black stare of Balalaika's Stechkin.

Revy sucked in a breath as the frigid hand of guilt seized at her throat. She had lead Balalaika right to the Boss's door. She had been too tired to even notice that she was being followed.

"Nice of you to show me around the place, Two Hands," Balalaika said with the hint of honey laughter in her voice. "And how are you, baby?"

Balalaika's eyes went wide a half-second too late as she realized her mistake. The man behind the desk was thinner and younger than Chang; she had made the same false assumption as Revy. The real Chang had been waiting for this. He had the twin muzzles of his. 22s were pressed into the back of her neck before she could curse her haste.

"For the last time, don't call me 'baby'," Chang said.

Revy trained her guns on Balalaika's face, which had closed into an expression of pure contempt. Her lacquered fingernails tightened around her Stechkin, and then her entire lithe arm twisted behind her back to target Chang's stomach. Without body armor, a single shot would be his agonizing death.

Balalaika smiled, but her eyes remained as ice. "Drop your weapons, Two Hands."

"You've got guns on your throat, and they ain't mine," Revy said.

Balalaika's behavior wasn't making sense, and that made Revy jumpy. It was like the Russian bitch wanted Chang to be the one to off her. Revy's felt her battered nerves threatening her control, but the final voice in the room elected that moment to speak.

"The circumstances could be better, but I am grateful that you are all here," Rock said from the other side of Chang's heavy desk. Revy watched Balalaika's cold eyes flick over to the Revy's sometimes-lover. Balalaika did not savor interferences; she eliminated them.

"Rock, get out of here," Revy said.

"Not until I've said what I need to say," Rock countered.

Revy didn't like the tone in his voice. That tone meant trouble. Rock as about to do something brave and stupid. Revy's fingers itched to 86 him on the spot out of blind frustration, but she couldn't dare look away from Balalaika.

He stood up from the desk and removed the sunglasses. It was then that Revy realized that Chang wasn't wearing his. The two of them had to be planning this whole situation to get the drop on Balalaika. What Revy didn't understand was why.

On the rim of her vision, Revy saw Rock survey the tableau of hatred: Chang at Balalaika's back with his guns on her pale neck; Balalaika with her eyes fixed on Revy and her gun trained on Chang's midsection; Revy nearly shaking with fatigue and anger while aiming for Balalaika's face.

"This hardly seems fair," Rock decided. "Mr. Chang, I am afraid that I will need to ask you to step down at this moment."

"This is so humiliating," Chang sighed, and Revy's jaw dropped open as her boss took a step back from his target. Fast as a fish in silver waters, the Stechkin leveled at Revy's chest, but Revy caught the flicker of surprise in the blue ice eye of Balalaika. Revy felt like she could see her own indignation at Chang's shocking obedience to Rock in her golden opponent's face.

Chang noticed it as well. He snatched the sunglasses offered by Rock and jammed them back on his face.

"That expression is disgusting," he said sharply. "Save it, Fry Face. He's got you, too, even if you don't know it yet."

"Rock," purred Balalaika, her voice low and dangerous. "Care to explain?"

Rock stepped dangerously close the lines of fire. Revy hissed. He held a Polaroid picture between his thumb and forefinger. He showed it, carefully and slowly, to the room's occupants. In it, a clear image of Balalaika in full-battle regalia looked down at the photographer. At her back, a solider with a sub-machine gun dangling from one shoulder opened a door into a black Benz. The hazy traffic and sloppy signs of Roanapur filled the background.

"Do you remember when this shot was taken?" Rock asked softly.

"No," Balalaika said.

"A child took it," Rock went on. "You may have noticed them. Kids with cameras all over the city during the last month. It's an innocent scam. Take a picture and try to sell it to tourists. Only there are so very few tourists in Roanapur. With no competition from other buyers, it wasn't hard to amass quite a collection."

"It's as bad as you think," Chang said to Balalaika. "I had a bit of time to review Rock's files. Those kids saw an awful lot."

"You used them as your spies," Balalaika fumed. "Isn't that a rather deplorable plan? Using children as your weapons?"

The insult failed to register on Rock's face. He continued: "When I first came to Roanapur, I wondered how such a place could exist. It didn't make sense that a city like this one could continue in a country that depends so heavily on tourism and in a world of multi-national crime sweeps. Over time, I realized that the balance of Roanapur hinged on three things: the cooperation of local authorities, the silence of the local media, and the isolation from international scrutiny."

"Lectures make me sleepy. Get to the point," Chang yawned.

"The data that has been gathered shows the depth of the war here. If it were to be released, the photos could generate a story that speaks of Roanapur's- and subsequently Thailand's- danger to tourists. Any city replete with warring gangsters and corrupt police would frighten away clientele from all of the country. If such a story were to break, then the national government of Thailand would be forced to take steps to control the damage to its reputation. I'm sure that you can see how detrimental such action would be for your operations." Rock paused and carefully placed the photo back into his pocket. "But, as you know, information can be buried and stories lost in the static of the world's newsfeed. You may feel as though you can gamble and win in this case, but you should know that the odds aren't favorable in the current climate. There are certain recent deaths in the community to consider, for instance."

"You're behind Watsup's murder," Balalaika ground out.

"The loss of Chief Watsup does remove the barriers to local media, but the death that you should be concerned about is Johann Fischer, a German tourist found in the international hostel with two bullets in his chest. His homeland will, of course, demand an inquiry when that news breaks, and the story of tourist's gruesome murder would propel any other sensational bits of trivia about Roanapur into the world's spotlight. Thailand would have no choice but to take dramatic actions to adjust its reputation," Rock finished.

The silence weighed so much that Revy wanted to kill them all and escape.

"What do you want?" Balalaika said at last.

Rock smiled. Revy's heart clenched. She knew that smile, and it did not belong the Rock that she knew. That smile was rabid. It was smile of a villain.

"Simply put, I want the chance to save Roanapur. If you accept my terms, then I will take care of this mess and return this city to its former, highly profitable glory as arbitrator between the crime syndicates and as representation to the police force, politicians, and media," Rock said.

Balalaika sneered. "Surely , you can't be offering to do this for free. Not after all your hard work setting up this vulgar mess."

"My payment is simple: a percentage of the profits for any project that I coordinate. I will take no other compensation from any party, which assures my neutrality and guarantees my commitment to resolve each challenge," Rock explained.

Balalaika turned her cold glare on Chang. "You are awfully quiet."

"Hey, I tried to kill him when he showed me those pictures, but there's a bit of an insurance policy. That blonde guy from Lagoon has the key to all the data, and he skipped town. If Rocky-boy here doesn't check in every twelve hours, the guy goes on autopilot and puts all of it in the open," Chang said.

"Between the two of us, I'm willing to bet that we have the resources and reach to sniff out this little intel rat. What would happen then?" Balalaika wondered aloud.

Revy saw Balalaika's hand swing toward Rock and tighten on the Stechkin, and Revy saw the inevitability of the the next few moments. Balalaika didn't care about winning; she wanted it to end. She would take the shot on Rock, and Chang would let her. Indeed, he couldn't stop her, even with his speed, when his guns were lowered at his sides. Nothing stood between Rock and a bloody end. Revy didn't want to care, but her body moved without permission. It stepped into the line of the Russian gun, in front of Rock.

Balalaika smirked. "Your little gun girl isn't yours anymore, Chang. I can't imagine you would care if I ended her now that she has shown her true loyalties. Oh, well." Her grin grew into a thing made wholly of teeth. "Say good-bye, you-"

"Enough," Chang interrupted. "It's over, Balalaika. We lost."

"I don't lose," she insisted. The hand that held the gun might have been carved from stone for as much as Balalaika wavered. Once the bullet left the chamber, Revy would be a splatter on the ceiling. She should move, she needed to move, but Rock's breath on her back kept her feet in place. Balalaika's bullet would take one of them, regardless. Revy held her ground.

Chang holstered his guns and stepped forward. His hand found the curve of Balalaika's spine in a gesture so intimate that Revy knew instantly that they were lovers. Something bitter and thick rose in the back of her throat. Once upon a time, she had put on cheap lace and waited for this man in his bedroom only to be rejected and dumped on Dutch's dock like an unwanted pet.

Balalaika did not soften. Her gaze remained fixed.

Chang's voice came out smooth and soft. Revy had to strain to catch the words.

"C'mon, Fry Face. We can review our pathetic options over breakfast. My treat," Chang said.

"No," Balalaika said.

"Blinis, right?" Chang continued. "You said, 'Maybe someday.' I'm asking you for today."

He stepped back, his hand passing along her back before retreating to his pockets, to let her decide. Slowly, miraculously, the Stechkin lowered inch by inch. Balalaika jammed it into a shoulder holster and procured a metal tube from a hip pocket. She took her time unscrewing the cap; Revy couldn't breathe in that long moment.

Balalaika's icy gaze dropped as her balletic fingers tapped out a thin cigar from the tube, one tip of it already razored off. Wordlessly, Chang produced a his omnipresent lighter and held it out. Balalaika turned away from Revy and Rock, passed the cigar through the flames, and savored her first long drag of smoke. When she looked up again, the warrior had fallen away to reveal the business woman.

"Who helped you?" she demanded of Rock.

"I acted on my own," he replied. "The rest of the alliances necessary to move forward were secured yesterday, but it is not flattery to say that Hotel Moscow and the 14K determine the future of the city."

"And that German tourist-?" she pressed.

"Won't be an issue. I have already taken appropriate measures in good faith. That story can be fully suppressed, provided that we have reached an agreement here."

"Hmph." Balalaika surveyed the Japanese man, who had just challenged her for control of the city and won, along with Revy, the exhausted gunslinger standing before that idiot like a total chump. Then she executed a tight spin on her heel, stalked up to Chang, and without a word, snagged his white scarf in one pale hand. It trailed behind her like a banner, edged with curls of smoke, as Balalaika swept out of the room.

Chang directed his gaze to Rock.

"I hope you know what you are doing," he said before turning to Revy. He shook his head, and the grin that twitched at the corners of his mouth lacked mirth. "It's been fun, Two Hands. I think our business is concluded."

Revy felt her breath catch as Chang left her. The last ember of her dreams to join the 14K burned out and left a smoldering pile of ash in her throat. She watched in a hazy daze as Chang hurried to catch up with the blonde warrior pacing away down the hall. By the time they turned the corner, their footsteps fell in complete syncopation, and then it was over.

"That went better than I expected," Rock spoke up from beside her.

Revy turned the barrels of her Cutlass Specials into his chest.

"Fuck you," she spat.

Rock smiled, his own smile this time, the smile that whispered softness and kindness and all the things that Revy longed to squeeze out of him and keep for herself, alone.

"100 grand a year," he whispered, and when his eyes showed more white than brown and his body slumped to the floor, Revy's body moved on its own again. She caught him before his head collided with the edge of the desk. They landed with a soft thump, like an exhaled breath, together on the floor. Revy's hands tried to hold on to him, even with the guns in the way.

She wanted to smack him. Of course, Rock would do something this pathetic. He could orchestrate a daring coupe, probably going without sleep for weeks on end, to face down the two biggest powerhouses of the city and win, but what would that loser do to celebrate? Faint like a girl.

"Fuck you," she said again without malice.

Her head dropped toward his chest as her own exhaustion threatened to claim her, but Revy heard the white noise of a radio emanating from the interior pocket of Rock's jacket. She listened to it, the rhythmless sound of nothing, until the nothing became her name.

"Revy. Hey, Revy. Pick up," someone called out.

One of her hands let go of its gun and snaked into Rock's clothing. Sure enough, her fingers closed on a headset. She pulled it out and put it to her ear.

"Stop squawking, Dutch. I hear ya," she said into the mouthpiece.

"Rock okay?" Dutch asked.

"Yep. He did the big talk and then passed out like a pussy. He's not hurt or nothing," she grumbled.

"Yeah, that's what it looked like," Dutch said.

Revy's head snapped up. Through the glaze of the high-rise window, she could see the tendrils of smoke from Dutch's cigarette rising from the top of the building across the street. The waning moonlight reflected equally off the top of his bald head and the barrel of the rifle resting at his side.

"Guess Rock had some back-up after all. Sure makes me feel stupid," Revy said bitterly.

"Some representation from the Rip-off Church is around here, too. Rock managed to get the rest of the city on his side before he went to the big bosses," Dutch said.

"Fan-fuckin'-tastic. Eda saw this shit? I'm never going to hear the end of it," Revy complained.

Rock spasmed in his sleep and nearly bucked out of her arms. Revy had to use both hands to hold him. She watched his chest rise and fall until she was convinced that it was just a passing thing, that he was still living there in her arms.

"You know, Otis is still in Phuket," Dutch said after that tense moment. "100 grand would buy you plenty of biscuits and gravy and Jack Daniels at his little diner joint."

"Otis," Revy half-laughed. "How is that seven-fingered sack of shit these days?"

"You could ask him yourself."

Revy took a breath. "You telling me to go, partner?"

"Never said that," Dutch replied evenly.

Revy looked down at Rock. The slack weight of him felt warm in her tired arms.

"Looks like I'll be spending less time out to sea. He's going to need some security, but he doesn't have the money to pay right now. Thought I'd volunteer and let him pay me with interest later," Dutch answered her thoughts.

"Make 'im double down, minimum," Revy tried to joke.

Dutch's dry chuckle rewarded her efforts. He let her think for a minute before asking the million dollar question.

"You staying or going, Rev?"

Revy wished that she knew.

"You tell me, Dutch."

"I can't help you. Not this time, partner."

"You know, he said that he loved me," Revy found herself saying. "What a fucking joke, right?"

"I wouldn't say that. He's been telling that to anyone who cares and a lot of us who don't."

"I should go," Revy said with finality.

"Probably," Dutch agreed.

Down in the street, the gunfire stopped. It had gone on for so long that it seemed like a part of the city, a permanent fixture of the night in Roanapur. Without it, Revy felt like she could have been anywhere in the world- any city, any country. It wasn't a sweet thought. Something about that calm silence undid her nerves.

She looked down at the man in her arms, and a glint of silver caught her attention. Rock's cufflinks bore the imprint of a skull atop crossed swords. An exact replication of the Jolly Roger emblem on her Cutlass Specials grinned up at her from each of his wrists.

"Do you need help? You know, protecting this idiot?" she found the strength to ask.

"Yeah. I do," Dutch answered.

"So I guess I'll stick around then."

Dutch paused to smoke. "Benny is coming back, too, once this mess gets settled. He said to tell you that he's sorry for missing the main event."

"He would have been useless anyway," Revy said.

Dutch laughed, for real this time, while Revy held Rock the best way she knew how and let herself breathe.

It was over, for now.

* * *

_A/N: Enormous debts of gratitude to Gramnegative for bribing me to finish this chapter and helping to make it better. Sad Eyes is a reference to Amigodude's work "Gun Punk" and Otis appears in "The Devil's Graveyard". Further notes can be found at unkeptsecret(dot)insanejournal(dot)com_


	13. Down and Up

Damn, was she pissed.

Even a drooling half-wit could see the scale of Balalaika's fury in the tightness in her shoulders and the heavy beat of her boots on the carpet. Still, Chang went after her and the flag of his scarf down the dim corridor to the elevator. The silken fabric streamed out behind her along with the cascade of golden hair as those long legs measured out the intensity of her rage. She had banked on an all-glorious death or, failing that, sweet victory. Instead, she had won nothing, and anything short of her goals was defeat to Balalaika. She would not accept failure easily, and yet he fell into step beside her despite the obvious danger, his foolish heart fluttering away under his breastbone, and waited for the fallout.

Balalaika did not spare a glance in his direction. Her voice, clipped and severe, poured out orders to her loyal troops through her hand-held radio unit. She spoke in Russian, so Chang could not decipher the meaning, even when she repeated the orders again and again to her various units.

When it became clear that she planned to ignore him, Chang gave up on waiting for her. His hand produced a phone from an inner pocket in his jacket. Three quick calls, all in Cantonese, and it was over. The war and his career, all over in the span of time it took to walk from his office to the elevators. If Balalaika had been defeated in this ordeal, then Chang had been fucked. He would have to provide an account of what all of the reinforcements and equipment that he sweet-talked Hong Kong into gifting him on the promise of a competition-free Roanapur had actually bought the Triads, and when that happened, he was done.

Chang wanted to tell her that they had both lost, but her rage made her as approachable as an iceberg. An ocean of things unspoken stretched out in that narrow span of inches between the cuffs of their overcoats as Balalaika finished the last of her calls just in time to bang her fist against the elevator's silver button. Its ringed eye blinked on, and the machinery sprang to life behind the sliding metal door with a muted whirl.

He stole another glance at her. She had crossed her arms over her ample chest. The expression on her face held all the warmth of a slab of granite. Only her eyes, fixed resolutely on the doors, offered up any sign of life. Balalaika seemed to be willing the elevator to move faster with her boiling stare.

Chang tucked his phone back into its pocket and allowed himself a longer look.

Her combat fatigues told the grim story of her long night. She reeked of smoke and gunpowder. Street dirt smeared her elbows and knees. A patch of drying blood made the fabric stick to her right thigh, but it wasn't from any wound of hers. Chang could see frustrations and exhaustion in her movements but not the tell-tale drag of an injury. She appeared totally unharmed, much to his relief, but to his chagrin, she had his scarf laced between her crossed arms. The ash from her lit cigar burned tiny networks of holes into the pearlescent fabric that hung from the sleeve of her overcoat. Chang wondered if making a play to get it back before the damage grew too severe would be worth the blood loss.

The elevator pinged upon arrival.

She looked at him and exhaled a sweet-smelling cloud of smoke as the doors slid open. He could read nothing except rage in that icy hot glare, and his heart squeezed too tight inside of him even as his mind chided him for such idiocy. What, exactly, did he keep trying to find in those blue eyes? A touch of tenderness? Relief? Love? He been right to stop her from killing Rock, but Balalaika did not understand the necessity of surrender or retreat. She believed in victory and Death. The Balalaika that he could have sworn that he knew would never stop the war until her enemy was vanquished or her men were all dead. He should not have been able to stop her, and yet he had. Perhaps he wasn't the only one who had suffered a change of heart lately.

He stepped onto the elevator a fraction of a second behind her, touched up the bridge of his sunglasses, and grinned like it was old times.

"I'm pretty serious about those blinis," he said.

She jabbed the lowest button with a chipped nail. The cigar hung from her limp lips for a heavy moment before a pale hand dragged it away.

"They are supposed to be good with honey, right?" he tried again, but she turned on him so fast that the question died on his lips. Her heat wiped away all memory of his aborted words as Balalaika shoved him against the paneling and insinuated herself into his arms, her mouth insistent on his and their hands everywhere at once.

Pleasure overwhelmed his shock. He moved on mercurial instinct to seize the chance to touch her, and impossibly, she arched that lithe body against him. Her mouth closed over his, and Chang re-learned the feel of every inch of her as the elevator slipped downward: the taste of her tongue, the scape of teeth, sway of her back, the dip of breast, the spread of shoulders, the brazen knee thrust between his, the jut of hipbone and pull of hands. That greedy mouth and an ocean of hair. He would drown in that hair. He put both hands into it and let the world fall away.

They landed with a soft settling. The bell pinged. The doors slid open, and she tore out of his grasp. Her Stechkin materialized at the ready.

"Boss?" someone asked.

Chang blinked back his lust and followed the line of her aim through the open elevator door and into the marble-floored lobby where a handful of his black suits stared at them with mouths agape.

Already, the sound of gunfire had faded into memory, but Balalaika's rage would reopen that wound before it had a chance to close. Chang saw his men reaching for their guns. He took a step forward.

"You," he barked, pointing at the nearest guy, a little man with the sharpest suit. "Find Bui and tell to get in touch the hospital director. He will be expecting the call. The rest of you- go and round up anyone bleeding. We'll organize triage here. I don't care what the wounded look like. Everyone still breathing gets help."

"But Boss…" the little man protested. The barrel of Balalaika's gun had not dropped, and the guy had a right to be baffled. Five minutes ago, he was supposed to kill the Russians. Now, their leader had appeared in his HQ and pulled a gun on him while his boss acted like the whole scene was as unsurprising as the sunrise.

Chang let his hand close around Balalaika's wrist and smiled.

"Business. Excuse us," he said dismissively.

"R-right," stuttered the little man.

Chang fingered one of the elevator buttons. The metal doors slid closed. The floor gave a gentle jerk as they ascended.

Balalaika whirled. The barrel of her gun pointed dead at the center of his chest. Chang watched her, panting and furious, with increasing confusion.

"You did this," she accused.

"No," he answered. "But I'm not sorry that it's done."

Her voice dropped low and dangerous. "You _knew_."

Once again, Chang caught himself trying to find the woman of his dreams through those slits of icy blue eyes.

"I suspected," he said.

"When?"

"When I pulled Two Hands into this. Christ, why do you think I got her involved? But I had no way to know that anything would become of it until tonight, especially after Rock showed up spouting that nonsense about the value of the peace and the status quo. I know he came to see you before this, too. Why would I expect this cute little turn of events coming after that?" Chang said.

"How dare you conspire to humiliate me?" Balalaika hissed.

Chang raised his chin and met her hard glare with his accustomed coolness. "Get over it. We lost, Fry Face. You and me."

Her lips curled back in a cruel grin. "You set it up to weaken us. Your filthy trigger bombs in trash cans and all those vile blockades. You killed us with cheap tricks, and then you dare to pretend that bastard just appeared in your office? Did you think I was such a fool?"

"Listen, I may not be your favorite person in the world right now, but I am not going to be your goddamn fall guy. You didn't see it either. Now we deal or we kill each other here," he said.

Balalaika's smile spread, revealing more columns of teeth. "I'll see you bleed for this."

"Then make me bleed," he said with a black hole blooming where his heart should be. "You can kill me here, but damn it all, Balalaika, don't insult me. Rock gave us a chance to end this mess, and I took it. You can hate me all you want, but so did you."

The barrel of the Stechkin ground into his chest, but it failed to register as a threat. Her gun didn't matter. He took three of those bullets in '93 and knew exactly how much it would hurt, but Chang had joined the ranks walking dead long before her high heels every settled on Roanapur's pavement. Balalaika's threats meant nothing to him.

He reached out to touch her magnificently marred face.

"I could give you a big speech about how all of this will make our lives easier," he said. "Or I could try to feed you a load of shit about how I'm bound to serve the Triad, loyalties and the greater good and all that garbage. But you know why I did it, Balalaika. I thought that we could throw down like we did back in the day, but too much has changed. I tried to give you the battle royale and the big finish. You know that I did. But I can't look at you and pull the trigger anymore."

That fiendish smile vanished as her lips formed the insult that he had been expecting. "Coward."

Even though her gun stayed fixed between two of his ribs, Chang leaned in and kissed her as gently as he dared, once on each eyelid. He couldn't help but linger over that patch of unblemished skin in the sea of scar tissue on the right side of her face. She smelled like the filth of battle, but even in those foul-smelling, men's combat clothes, her beauty had the power to astound him. He was stupid to love her so much.

At last, Chang pulled back and put on his smile. The elevator had paused on the top floor, and the doors slid open and closed again after a long minute. They begin to descend again while he spoke.

"You can kill me, if it makes you feel better. I'm finished here anyway. Once Hong Kong gets word of this disaster, they will politely and mercilessly drag my ass into retirement or worse. I've lost enough face for putting up with you for all the years to give them good reason to get rid of me. This is just icing. My money is on Tommy Gui to replace-"

Chang paused to watch Balalaika retract her Stechkin and press the button to eject the clip, which dropped to the floor and skittered to the mirrored corner of the elevator. Her balletic hands jacked the slide to pop out the last round in the chamber. The gun made a hollow, tolling sound like a gong with it hit the marble. He dared not move as she reached around him to steal his .22s from the double holster at the base of his back. Two more clips clattered to the floor, followed by the gentle tinkling of two loose rounds and then the thuds of the guns themselves.

"No one will replace you," she said. "The situation will remain the same. I will not work with some arrogant bastard who has more ambitions than common sense. We do this our way."

"Our way," Chang repeated, not understanding, but when she looked at him with all the fierce protectiveness that she usually reserved for her men, he lost the will to argue with her.

She placed the white scarf around his neck and crossed ends in the front to tighten the fabric over his throat as she spoke. "If this is not the end for Hotel Moscow, then I wish to return the order of the past. Our associates in Hong Kong and St. Petersburg may speak different languages, but they understand profit. Rock has promised us a lucrative future, and he will deliver, no? Until that future and your return to Hong Kong's good graces is realized, you will be allowed to control the Triads by default. Your Mr. Gui is dead, as are the rest of the Triad elite, so unless Hong Kong would prefer to see the Thailand division lead by Two Hands...?"

Chang sighed. "Never thought that I would be happy that you killed my best men."

"The losses were great on both sides," Balalaika said with a solemn nod.

He knew her well enough to know that those words were as close as she could get to grieving. Chang now understood the reasoning behind her change of heart and why she had accepted less than total victory. She had seen too many of her men die, or else she had realized that they didn't want her gift of Death. Boris was gone, and the face of that little half-breed Ivan kid from their morning stroll must have stayed with her as it haunted him. Either way, she had lost too much of her cause to keep fighting. He reached out and collected her into his arms. She offered no resistance.

"I'm sorry," he said into her hair. "Are you okay?"

She did not answer or move to return the embrace, but she let herself by held by him.

"So we do this our way?" he asked at last.

"Yes," she answered.

"Just so you know, I'm probably in love with you," he said.

"Then you're a fool," she said, but her head came down to touch his shoulder while her hands slipped under his jacket.

"Any ideas about how we could pull the incredible figures we'll need to impress our bosses?" he asked.

She tipped her face to his throat and pressed a kiss above the scarf. "We can discuss those details after breakfast."

Chang could have laughed at that, but the nearness of her offered far too many other more appealing options. He reached over and jammed the emergency stop button on the elevator's control panel.

Damn, he had missed her.

* * *

_A/N: There are just a few more loose threads to tie up in the next and final chapter._


	14. Simple

Rock should not have bought the dress. He knew that now.

Of course, he did not understand why buying the dress for Revy had been a bad idea. He only understood that they were late, really and rudely late, and Revy was glaring at him in her cut-offs and scuffed boots with one gun under each shoulder.

She alternated sentences with gulps of protein shake. "Look, Rock. I'm your bodyguard. I ain't your date. I'm wearing this."

"But what's wrong with the dress?" Rock asked. He didn't mean to whine, but old habits die hard.

Back in the day, Revy would have jumped on his weakness with both heavy-booted feet. Yelling. Cursing. Insults. Today's Revy pulled a bitter face, applied the shake can to her mouth, and downed it. Rock recognized the silence as her newly-learned version of restraint.

Half of him (the half that had forgotten how much a sucker punch from Revy hurt) itched to argue with her. Given fifteen minutes and a heavy dose of manipulation, he could get her to wear that dress. It was a simple yet lovely thing made of black jersey satin. Nothing fancy, nothing slutty. Just a basic dress that would look great on her. Rock had been looking forward to seeing her wearing it.

"Revy, this is a formal event. You can't wear shorts. It'll look bad," he tried.

"Like I care," Revy shot back.

"Please," Rock said, careful not to let his voice lilt again.

The emptied can sounded like a gong when Revy dropped in it into the sink instead of the garbage pail tucked under the sink, just like Rock had been hounding her not to do for months.

He didn't get the chance to start that same-old argument because Dutch rapped on the door to Revy's old apartment before letting himself in. The new charcoal jacket looked impossibly crisp through his broad shoulders, but Dutch wore it well. Rock had made sure of the fit when he bought it for his former boss.

Revy gave a low whistle. "Lookin' fancy, partner."

Dutch surveyed her outfit with cool eyes. "I see that you don't change," he said before turning to Rock. "We ready?"

Rock allowed himself one last, helpless glance at the black dress hung carefully from the back of the closet door. She would have looked so breath-taking in it, but Revy's sour frown would spoil the whole thing. And they were beyond late.

"Yeah," Rock said. "We better go."

Rotton drove the silver Benz carefully through the streets of Roanapur with Dutch riding shotgun and Revy tucked in the back seat next to Rock. In the old days, Benny would have been behind the wheel, terrorizing pedestrians with a lead foot in his candy-apple red American classic roadster, but Rock couldn't be so conspicuous now. Roanapur had learned that Rock was the new face of power. To see its kingpin careening through the urban center would start a panic, so Rotton drove because, unlike Benny, he didn't mind coming to a full stop at intersections and viewed an empty boulevard as just another street instead of the Autobahn. Rotton didn't mind the menial work, and Rock could trust him with it. An extra set of guns didn't hurt either. Besides, Benny's skills were better used back at the office.

Revy devoted all of her attention to the window as they drove. Rock watched the lines of her body contract with tension as they passed from 14K turf into the realm of Hotel Moscow. The Ivan sentinel posted at the street corner nodded solemnly at the vehicle as they drove by. From the front seat, Dutch nodded back even though the darkened windows would blot out the gesture. They were expected and welcome, but Revy's mental map of the old Roanapur would never die. The heel of her left boot tapped out a nervous rhythm as Rotton steered the car to the curb in front of their destination.

A couple of hulking Ivans calmly watched them emerge from the car. The thread of music and conversation slipped through the cracks around the curtained windows and thick double doors of the newly restored building in front of them. As Rock had suspected, the wedding was long over, and the reception well underway. As further proof of their tardiness, one of the doors swung open, and a red-faced Italian stumbled out. He muttered something that must have been a curse at the seam in the pavement that almost caused him to face-plant into the concrete.

The woman who followed him giggled, then hiccuped. Each spasm of her generous chest threatened to pop one of her huge tits free of her low-cut velvet dress.

Rock sighed. Not only had the reception already begun, but the guests were already plowed. He dreaded the ice of Balalaika's glare for their insultingly delayed arrival.

The drunken woman stepped out of her stiletto pump and careened into her equally inebriated escort, who cursed again, loudly enough to make the Ivans reach for their weapons. Revy wasn't the only one whose old habits lived on despite the new order in Roanapur. Rock opted to play it safe.

"Rotton, would you please help these two make their way home?" he asked.

The Italian turned on them his face red and twisted with indignation, but the expression melted back to slack skin when he realized who has issued the order.

"Those Ivans know how to make the drinks serve their purpose," the man explained in Italian with a shrug.

"I'll keep that in mind," Rock answered.

The buxom woman smiled coyly and giggled again. The bust line of her dress slipped closer to blatant indecency.

Revy made a mock-gagging noise, and the Ivan guards stifled their laughter.

Dutch shook his head, tucked his hands into his pockets, and studied the underbelly of a passing jet.

Rotton opened the back door of the Benz with his sunglasses pointed directly down at the pavement.

Rock raised an eyebrow at the Italian, and the man reddened in an instant. He slipped off his dinner jacket and draped it over his date's shoulders.

"But it's not cold!" she protested, confusion written across her flushed face.

The Italian wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her stagger to the waiting car.

"My apologies," he muttered to Rock as he ushered her into the backseat.

Rock opted not to reply. The man's embarrassment was evident.

Rotton shut the door, and Rock turned back to his group. One of the Ivans already had the door open for them. The cool of the indoor air-conditioning billowed out and disappeared into the heat and humidity of the city. Rock took a step toward the welcoming interior.

"What are you looking at?" Revy demanded in English.

Rock blinked. "What?"

"Quit looking at me like that," Revy snarled. She had fixed him with another of her feral glares.

"What?" Rock repeated dumbly.

"Hey, Wizard! Gimme your jacket," Revy said.

Rotton paused mid-duck into the driver's seat. "Why?"

"Because I'm cold."

"In April in Roanapur?" Rotton asked suspiciously.

Revy crossed her arms. "I'm a delicate flower of a woman."

Rotton hmphed his disbelief, and before Revy could come unhinged, Dutch gave up and headed inside without them. He had his own invitation, a professional courtesy from Balalaika. One flash of the embossed card stock, and Dutch breezed past the Ivan bouncers to all-you-can-eat stroganoff and the slow repair of his courier business inside. Eight months of serving as Rock's personal guard disagreed with him. Something in Dutch needed control and adventure, or maybe some men were only meant to work for themselves. It was hard to fill in the details with Dutch. For a man so direct in his dealings, he remained stubbornly obtuse in his personal life. He never complained, but Rock had observed the steady uptick in Dutch's bourbon consumption. Rock estimated that he would need to depend on his former boss for another three months, just long enough to find, train, and test the loyalties of a replacement body guard.

Rock watched the crisp lines of Dutch's new suit disappear into the smokey dimness and gentle pulse of music inside the building.

It had been eight months since Rock's power grab, but only a few days since he had been able to pay off the balance of his debts. It wasn't that Roanapur's crime syndicates were unprofitable under his management. Quite the opposite, actually. Collaboration and coordination (instead of the tradition of in-fighting and malignment) made Roanapur into an even brighter jewel, but Rock had underestimated the costs embedded in his new career.

The loans had to be paid out at their insane interest rates; he needed to pay salaries to his new workers- those were expected expenses. The unexpected costs were problem. Rock hadn't fully calculated the price of his own safety and security: the reinforced Benz after someone took a pot shot at Benny's car, the scale of the bribes it took to install a new police chief of his choosing, the steep demands of the local police force to accept his new (corrupt) chief, the jacked-up tributes necessary to keep Chang in power, and all the lousy citizens of Roanapur who clamored for a little bit of blackmail money to help them rebuild. All of those things cost dearly.

From the staggering sum earned from those eight months' of work, Rock had nearly nothing left to show for his long days of work and masterful criminal planning. The meager total that his efforts yielded in discretionary funds had gone into gifts for the three people he depended on the most: repairs and parts for Benny's beloved car, a new suit for Dutch, and the dress that Revy had left hanging back in the apartment.

In the old days, they would have gone drinking at the Yellow Flag with the extra cash, but Rock couldn't risk that kind of exposure anymore.

Revy pushed past him, Rotton's duster jacket swirling around her. It was too big in the shoulders and too long in the sleeves, but Revy had it buttoned in the front to cover her immodest outfit. The fabric pulled in at her narrow waist and fell in long lines from her hips. It wasn't the black dress that he had picked out for her, not even close, but Revy's personal brand of beauty didn't need more than a well-collared coat to look lovely.

"You coming or what?" she called over her shoulder.

With a touch of his cufflinks to straighten his shirt, Rock followed her inside.

The short hallway gave way to a large room bedecked with flowers and candles. Round tables smothered with white linen stretched to the corners of the room, and the similarity of the faces grouped at each table reminded Rock of a high school cafeteria. The Colombians sat with other Colombians, the Russians with Russians. Even the Rip-Off Church had claimed their own private corner in the back of the room. The obvious divides failed to fluster Rock. Regardless of seating arrangements, the upper tier of Roanapur's criminal hives were all present for a social function. This was extraordinary progress for eight months, given the animosities of the past. In the old days, these groups would only meet on this scale in combat.

Rock spotted Balalaika making the rounds with the newly married couple on the far side of the room. He intended to make his apologies right away, but Chang beckoned to him from the table of honor. Rock could see his untouched place setting next to the 14K's leader.

"Just take a seat and play it nice," Chang instructed. "Goldie's on a war path that has nothing to do with you, so if your luck holds, she probably hasn't even realized you've been gone."

Rock said his thanks and dropped into the open seat. The other heads at the table acknowledged him quietly. Ronny issued a quick nod. Abrego lifted his vodka tonic in tributary. Yolanda waved a forkful of beef tips at him and smiled.

Despite the empty chair next to Rock, Revy ghosted back to the shadows with the other bodyguards lurking along the wall. The one in the black suit welcomed her by handing over his drink, which Revy accepted without hesitation. Most of the men of the 14K treated Revy with a sort of awed, school-boy crush. Old allegiances remained, despite the new order, but so did old grudges. The Italian on the other side of her fumed. The Columbian glared over his cigarette. No one would forget the role that Two Hands played in Roanapur's recent civil war.

As much as he wanted her beside him, Rock couldn't fault Revy's precaution. He needed her as a bodyguard. The influx of wealth to Roanapur surged under Rock's leadership, but the percentage splits didn't satisfy all parties equally. Someone had send a contractor after Rock just last week. The man was clearly incompetent. Rotton had been able to finish his introduction before offing the would-be assassin, but the hit wasn't meant to succeed. It was just a warning, and it wouldn't be the last.

A waiter swept in with a plate of hot food. Rock looked around the table. Neither Abrego nor Dago had touched their dinners, but Yolanda and Chang shared Rock's assessment of Balalaika. She wouldn't be so sloppy as to allow anyone to poison the guests at a Hotel Moscow party. The stroganoff tasted delicious.

Across the way, Balalaika moved from table to table in a spectacular blue shift that made the bride, a pale wisp of a woman draped in yards of lace, look like a ghost beside her. Only the groom seemed to achieve any sort of balance at dividing his attention between his new wife and his stunning commander. Balalaika held the attention of her guests like an enchantress.

Beside him, Chang sighed and lit up another cigarette. "You know those two lovebirds have been promised since childhood, or something like that. She has been waiting for him in the Mother Country for all these years. It's a cute story."

"I'll ask to hear it when they come by," Rock said. "Unless, of course, they have already passed through?"

Chang pushed out a long breath. Smoke wafted up to the ornate ceiling. Even with the customary shades, Chang's frown betrayed his devil-may-care exterior. There was only one person living who could unsettle the Heavenly King, and she was passing through the room in a breath-taking sapphire cocktail dress with the latest of her men to settle into matrimony in tow.

Rock returned his attention to his supper. So they were fighting again. Chang and Balalaika made a point to keep their personal relationship separate from their business dealings, so Rock saw no reason to pry into their affair. No one dared to gossip about the frequent trysts between Chang and Balalaika, but the information had to be common knowledge by now. The evidence was everywhere. Soon after they brokered a cease-fire in the city, wives and girlfriends had started arriving. Hotel Moscow's barrack-like living arrangements fractured and spread to an entire block of single family flats in less than six weeks after Rock's coup as the spell of Balalaika's warrior-monks broke. The Colombians seeded out to bungalows in the suburbs of the city soon after that. The Italians preferred closely spaced town homes. Rock welcomed the gentrification of Roanapur's combatants. It lent greater stability to the city and planted the hunger to maintain a safe status quo in the gut of every man who brought his woman (and sometimes children) past the smiling statue of Buddha in the harbor.

But perhaps Rock gave too much credit to Chang and Balalaika's quiet but certainly not secret love affair. After all, the whole of the city knew that Rock shared his bed with Two Hands nightly. Even now, he felt her at his back, watching and waiting in case he needed her.

The wedding reception continued with the hum of conversation, the chink of ice chips in crystal glasses, and the thin strains of a string quartet. Rock relinquished his dream of Revy in the dress and opted enjoy the Russian hospitality for the rest of the evening until a bit of trouble reared up.

Balalaika opted to skip the table with the heads. She shot one icy glare at Chang out of the corner of her cruel blue eyes and passed them by. The bride and groom followed like sheep.

The effect of the snub was instantaneous.

"_Puta fea_," muttered Abrego.

Ronny cracked his knuckles.

"Damn," Chang said to himself. He tipped back in his chair and gestured to one of his men. When his man arrived, Chang slipped him a white envelope. "Take this to the bride with my congratulations. The bride, alone. Got it?"

"Yes, Boss," the Triad underling nodded and vanished to complete the task.

Chang flashed a smile at the rest of the table. "Our hostess should join us shortly, but since she has kept us waiting for so long, I think we should start our enjoyment of these without her."

A slight wave of Chang's hand brought a team of servers to the table with a passel of premium cigars and full bottles of aged scotch. Rock accepted the cigar, but he had no real taste for hard alcohol. He would find a way to pass it along to Dutch later. The other heads seemed to enjoy the peace offerings with greater gusto. Rock couldn't decide if Chang had rigged it to cover for Balalaika or if he had simply put the jump on her plans, as he claimed. Either way, Chang's quick-thinking stopped the bad situation from becoming a disaster.

Rock watched with detached interest as the low-ranked Triad made the delivery to the bride. She had no trouble opening the envelope, but the furrows in her sweet face showed that she couldn't read the contents. She passed the papers to her husband, who couldn't decipher the meaning either. He submitted it to Balalaika, who took in the entirety in a a glance. Rock watched her eyes flash toward Chang. There was no rancor in her gaze this time.

Chang pretended to be unaware of the thawing. He sipped his scotch and nodded along with the now-cheerful Abrego's booming tales of parties in South America. Balalaika joined them minutes later.

"I apologize for keeping you waiting. You were right to begin the celebrations without me," she said with a smile.

She took a seat next to Chang, and the servers scurried forward to put a fresh cigar in one of her hand and a glass of liquor in the other. She waved off the plate of food since platters of desserts was already being served around the room.

The bride and groom moved around the table to greet each head appropriately and thank them for attending. The bride had very few words in English, but she didn't need them. Her gratitude toward Chang showed in the way she bowed. Her husband flushed; Hotel Moscow made it a point to eschew Asian customs. The bride ignored her husband's discomfort.

"Thank you," she said in careful English.

When the couple had gone and the rest of the table had gone back to their pleasures and stories, Rock noticed Balalaika's hand skim over Chang's as she reached to flick the ash of the cigar into the tray. The motion lasted no longer than a second, but Chang's frown finally eased at the slightest touch of his lover's fingertips. Whatever it was that had come between them was now over.

The party lasted late.

When the scotch ran out, Ronny sent for a few bottles of wine from his private stock, and then Abrego felt it necessary to provide something from his collection. Rock made a mental note to start stocking finer liquor. Yet another expense he hadn't planned for...

When Balalaika left the table to see the young couple off for their wedding night, Revy unpeeled herself from the wall.

"Hey, what did you get them?" she asked Chang while helping herself to Rock's drink.

"What does it matter?" Chang responded.

"It matters because I want an ace up my sleeve in case Sis ever gets pissed at me. Whatever you did got you back on her good list in a hurry," Revy said.

Chang laughed. "I pulled some strings and cut some corners to get the bride her papers. Legit, so she doesn't have to worry about visas and all that. She also looks like she has a nice little state job, so she can have a bank account in her name with clean money."

"That's it?" Revy scoffed.

"Hey, that's not something you can just buy. It took some time," Chang said.

"Yeah, but how did that get you off the hook with Fry Face?" Revy asked.

"Let me explain something to you, Two Hands." Chang pushed up his sleeve to reveal a shiny new watch. It was nice, but nothing too impressive. The quality and make were a cut below Chang's typically high-end tastes. "You know that I used to have a different life, and yesterday was my birthday. That former life of mine decided to send me a little present. And let's just say that Balalaika is the jealous kind."

"Then why did you wear the watch?" Revy asked.

"Because I'm suicidal," Chang dead-panned. "That's besides the point. Here's the lesson. The fastest way to stop that woman from craving your blood is to be nice to her troops. So I did."

"Whatever. Sounds like a big, dumb hassle to me," Revy said and stalked back to the wall, Rock's full glass of iced sipping tequila from Abrego in hand.

"She's not happy," Chang observed.

"Yeah," Rock said.

"What did you do?"

"I bought her a dress. A nice one. Black."

Chang puffed on his cigar. "Sorry, but that's not it."

"I'm pretty sure it is," Rock said miserably.

"Trust me, kid. You may be the mastermind now, but I'm old and I know far too much about women who can kill you. Some dress isn't your problem."

"There'a a problem?" Balalaika asked in her honey-smooth voice as she rejoined the table.

"No, not at all," Rock replied. "You look lovely, Miss Balalaika."

"You're still adorable," she smiled back. "Which is why I won't bother to ask why you were so very late to the celebration."

"My apologies."

Again, Rock noticed the subtle language between her and Chang. Her fingers slid across the end of Chang's white scarf as she slipped into her seat. He passed his untouched glass of tequila to her and signaled to the servers for another. No glances shared. No words exchanged. They made it seem simple.

Rock looked back at Revy, who had resumed her sentry from the wall. Maybe he had been missing some small signal for her all these months. Or maybe he had been communicating something to her through little motions that he did not mean to say.

Maybe it wasn't about the dress.

The ride home was blissfully uneventful. Revy once again paid all of her attention to the window. She only relaxed once Rotton, who was happily reunited in his black jacket, turned the car back down neutral streets.

Back at their building, Rock ached to follow Revy back to their apartment, but just like the old days, he couldn't. Instead, he trailed Dutch up the stairs to the office to do his final check-in with Benny before he could rest.

"Hey, we're being blackmailed again," Benny called out as soon as Dutch had the door open.

Dutch tossed his jacket over the back of a couch and went for another glass of bourbon. "Again? These people are like maggots on roadkill. They come out of nowhere."

"Do they have a case?" Rock asked.

"Do any of them have a case?" Benny sighed. "Some blonde in the red-light district says that you dished about your nefarious plans while boning her. Apparently, you are going to kill off all the heads in Roanapur. All of them. Just because."

"Blondes aren't my type," Rock grumbled. He loosened his tie and considered his options. Chang and Balalaika wouldn't care about some scrap of gossip, but Abrego had a thing for blondes...

"Her asking price just happens to be the same amount as a plane ticket to Hawaii," Benny said.

"Doesn't make much sense," Dutch interjected. "A blonde whore is going to make more in Asia than the US. She's a novelty here. Sounds like she wants to get someplace safe."

Rock thought about the incompetent assassin that Rotton had killed. Someone had to send him. Abrego had been particularly vocal about his displeasure lately, and when he went whoring, his taste was always leggy blondes. He might have been the one talking in bed. The pieces fit well enough.

"Set up a meeting with her," Rock said.

Benny cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh?"

"I'm not paying for blackmail, but I don't mind trading for information," Rock explained.

"Whatever you want, Rocky." Benny turned back to his chat session with Janet.

The nightly debriefing ended with the usual absent formality. Rock killed a few more minutes going through some of Benny's latest bits of intel and the stack of mail before heading back to the apartment. Dutch walked with him, just like any other night, because Rock needed the security. In Roanapur, even the dangerous likes of Balalaika and Chang only moved with an escort. Rock missed the independence of the old days. To think, he used to go down to the corner and get a shave with a straight razor from a near-stranger.

Dutch and Rock usually made the nightly walk in silence, but tonight, Dutch paused and drew a breath. Rock already knew what he was going to say. He had seen the number of guests who had quietly approached Dutch at the wedding reception.

"Rock, I'm starting Lagoon again. This is my two weeks' notice."

It wasn't easy to hear and the time table was truly daunting, but Rock smiled. "That's fine."

Dutch scratched the back of his head. "I know that I'm leaving you in a bad place, but-"

"No," Rock interrupted. "You've done more than enough. I intend to repay that favor."

"You might want to save that sentiment. There's more." Dutch paused to consider the stars. "I'm going to offer Benny and Revy their old jobs back."

Years of training kept Rock's smile in place. "Of course. That makes sense."

"Yeah, well, Benny won't go for it. You won't make him keep his precious gear on a greasy boat. Besides, he likes your sort of challenges more than the standard communication officer crap. But I'd like to let him know that I would be happy to have him back," Dutch said. "Thing is, I can't say what Revy wants. I thought that you would want a word with her before I say anything."

Rock's brain supplied the appropriate words, even through the shock. "Thank you. I will do that."

"This isn't personal. Are we cool?" Dutch asked.

Rock's mouth moved again. "Yes. Of course. Goodnight."

He turned and went into the apartment.

She never locked the door. She said that it didn't matter, that if someone wanted to get in, they were coming in with or without the lock. It didn't matter how much he nagged, and tonight was no different. Rock pushed open the door without the usual reprimand on his lips because he felt too sick. Losing Revy wasn't an option, not when Dutch was leaving, too. He couldn't replace them both in two weeks without seriously compromising his security. He needed them. He needed her. He would have to find the right words to make her stay.

He looked up, his mind made, and there she was in the black dress and barefoot.

"Happy now?" she said.

Revy looked spectacular, better than he imagined. The dress dipped and curved in all the right places and she looked delicious, but Rock couldn't tell her that because even a selfish idiot like him could see that she was miserable. His heart twisted up inside of his chest because it hurt to see her that unhappy. Chang was right; it had nothing to do with the dress.

She must have misunderstood his expression for disapproval because Revy crossed her arms and turned from him.

"Don't look at me like that. Christ. You're the one who bought the damn thing."

Rock reached out for the woman that he loved. One hand caught her waist. The other found her hair. Despite all her bravado, Revy succumbed to his touch just like always. She leaned into him and let herself be held. He loved that about her- how she could curse and rage and kill, but she never resisted the pull of his arms. Some part of her couldn't resist him, just as a piece of him couldn't refuse her.

"What else do you want from me, Rock?" she asked of his shoulder. Her arms hung limp at her sides.

What did he want? That was easy. He wanted her to be his bodyguard and his lover. He wanted her to be safe, and he wanted her to protect him. He wanted her to wear her guns and his dress, to kill for him but never die for him, to obey his every order and to be his equal.

He wanted everything.

The realization of his selfishness made him tighten his hold on Revy. She let him crush her body against him without compliant, and Rock felt all of the worse for her surrender. He could glimpse the shine of his cufflinks peeking out from the sleeves of his dark jacket. Over eight months ago, he adopted Revy's emblem to show everyone the reason why he had taken over the city. He had done it all to get her clear of the blood. _A hundred grand_. He meant he to show her another way, but then, she had stayed. He had been too drunk on his victory and her hot kisses to make her leave right away. And then he discovered that he needed her help. And then he got busy and overwhelmed by his new responsibilities. And then he bought her a black dress that she hated because he wanted to reward himself. He stopped doing it for her and started doing it for himself. God damn it. He was a fool.

"Revy, I'm sorry. You look amazing, but that dress isn't you," he said into her tattooed shoulder.

"No shit," she shot back, but her hands came up to return his embrace.

Rock reminded himself that she deserved what ever she wanted before he spoke again. "Dutch is restarting Lagoon. He's going to ask you to come back onboard."

She stiffened in his arms. "And? I got a gig as your heavy, you know."

"And I need you more just like this. I don't want to be your boss and your..." Rock trailed off because no word seemed adequate. Boyfriend? Lover? Nothing seemed to fit, and if there was one thing that he had learned from Revy, it was that action beat words every time. He used his handful of her hair to tip back her face so he could kiss her.

"I want you to be happy. That's it," he finished when the kiss broke apart on its own. His brain was screaming at him that he was making a mistake. Letting her go would leave him vulnerable and foul up his carefully-laid plans. He needed her protection. He needed Two Hands. But he loved Revy more.

"What if I'd be happy sitting my ass on a bar stool all day?" she asked.

"That's fine."

"What about getting my own rig and going diving whenever I wanted?"

"Anything," Rock replied.

Revy pulled away from him and found his eyes. Rock couldn't stop his hand from touching her face.

"Rock, baby, I hate being your body guard," she confessed.

"Then don't do it," he nodded.

"If Dutch wants be partner up again, I'm all for that," Revy went on.

"Okay."

"And I fucking hate this dress," she concluded.

Rock found the zipper with ease, and after it was undone, the straps fell from her shoulders with only a tiny push.

"Then don't wear it," he said.

She grinned at him, and that flash of unadulterated joy made him breathless.

He wanted her.

He loved her.

He would keep it that simple.

In Roanapur, city of heat and betrayal and hardship and blood, he would keep them that simple.

* * *

_Story wrap-up at unkeptsecret (.) insanejournal (.) com /11286_

_Thank you and good night._


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